


The Twice-Cursed King

by Traincat



Series: The Spider Prince and the Morning Star [2]
Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23566741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traincat/pseuds/Traincat
Summary: Once upon a time, Johnny had lived alone with his sister alone together in a cabin at the edge of a forest, convinced no one would ever truly want him. Now he lived in an enchanted castle filled with people, and he was the lover of their king. Anything he wanted was merely a request away.In some ways, Johnny felt more alone than before.--The Goblin King has been defeated and all should be well in Peter's kingdom east of the sun and west of the moon. But strange dreams and new talents leave Johnny wondering if the Goblin King laid only the one curse. Sequel to The Spider Prince and the Morning Star.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Johnny Storm
Series: The Spider Prince and the Morning Star [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696273
Comments: 22
Kudos: 173
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2018





	The Twice-Cursed King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pommenade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pommenade/gifts).



> For Boat, who wanted a sequel to my fairy tale AU "The Spider Prince and the Morning Star" and who was WAY TOO PATIENT WITH ME while I wrote it! I love you and I hope you love this! You're the very best of fic planning partners. Thank you for always being willing to dumpster dive into the trope trash with me. The third installment, when it's written, will also be for you, obviously.

It was late by the time they fell into bed and they were both exhausted. Peter made a few fumbling passes, but around the third jaw-cracking yawn Johnny cupped a hand to his face and kissed him and told him they had time, now, and to go to sleep already.

“The lights,” he murmured, referring to the softly glowing lamps burning without flame that dotted Peter’s bedchamber. “Can we leave them on?”

“If you wish it,” Peter said, dark eyes glimmering. Johnny had used to spend hours trying to transform the memory of the features underneath his fingertips into a face, and eventually he’d spent enough time touching him that he conjured up a rough picture – but he’d never been able to guess the color of his eyes.

It felt good to know.

Johnny traced the line of his jaw. “I wish.”

Peter was asleep within minutes, but for a long time after Johnny just lay there, in that impossibly soft bed, staring at Peter’s face in the unearthly lamplight. He didn’t even touch him, afraid he’d wake him, just sat there with his cheek propped up on his hand, trying to memorize his face, the slightly crooked nose and the thick brows, the long eyelashes fanned out across his cheek. There was a stubbornness to his face, even in sleep, and it made Johnny want to smile.

Peter shifted but didn’t wake when Johnny finally dared to press his lips to his temple.

The night air was chilly when he stepped out onto the balcony, but though Johnny registered it, he didn’t seem to really feel the cold. It slipped off him, leaving him untouched by its icy fingers. The bedsheet trailed behind him, a makeshift robe, as he leaned out to stare into the darkness. By the moon’s soft glow he could make out the gardens down below, the sweet smelling flowers and the apple trees. It was beautiful. He couldn’t quite believe he was here.

East of the sun, west of the moon, and in his prince’s castle.

Peter was still sleeping soundly in bed as Johnny gathered his clothes up from the floor and slipped them back on. He opened the bedroom door with nary a creak.

The halls were still and empty. Moonlight spilled in through the windows, lighting the way. Johnny glanced over his shoulder at Peter’s sleeping form, and then he slipped into the hall, shutting the heavy door quietly behind him.

It felt impossible that he was really here. He retraced the steps of the day, down the long corridor leading to Peter’s room and out into the main hall. He lingered at the windows, staring out into the dark courtyard where, just hours before, he’d walked through flames for Peter.

The memory sparked at his fingertips, hot as coals. He kept walking.

The castle was deathly still. Soon the familiar halls faded away, and Johnny found himself in new and unfamiliar territory. When he turned to go back, he found he couldn’t remember which way he had come. He was, he soon discovered, hopelessly lost, like a child in an enchanted forest without a trail of breadcrumbs to mark the way back. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to find a familiar hall.

Gradually he came across a long dark hallway, one that seemed different than the others. There were no doors set in it except for at the end, where he could just barely make out a heavy door barred with iron. Strange markings glowed around the edges of it, pulsing red and blue. Something about it seemed to beckon Johnny forward. There was a something almost like music in the air, just on the edges of his perception, so quiet he could barely hear it.

The music was calling his name. He took a step towards the barred door.

“You’re not supposed to be out here,” a voice said.

The music stopped as quickly as it had started and, startled, Johnny turned. There was a man standing tall in the hallway. He was broad-shouldered with a mop of reddish blond hair and a friendly face; he looked like a knight out of a storybook.

“Sorry,” Johnny said, turning away, embarrassed at having been caught skulking around. “I was – I got turned around and – that door…”

A look of wonder came over the knight’s face as Johnny stepped forward into the moonlight.

“You’re the one, right?” the man said. He raised a hand, and then lowered it. “The one who freed our king.”

It felt strange to think of himself that way, but at the same time he could still feel the warmth of the fire, like the embers had banked themselves somewhere under his skin.

“Yes,” he said.

The man smiled and then, to Johnny’s shock, he knelt down on one knee with his head bowed low and one fist pressed to his chest.

“Thank you,” he said. “Truly, thank you.”

 _I didn’t do it for you,_ Johnny almost said, startled by the deep gratitude in the man’s voice.

“It’s, um,” he said, feeling more awkward than anything. First he’d been caught sneaking around and now the guard was _bowing_ to him. No one had ever bowed to Johnny before. “I was happy to do it. You can, you know –“ he cleared his throat awkwardly. “You may rise.”

Slowly, the guardsman got to his feet. He still looked at Johnny like he’d hung the moon.

“My name is Eugene,” he said, almost breathless. “I’m one of the king’s royal guard. But everyone calls me Flash, because I’m so quick with a sword.”

“Flash,” Johnny said. “I’m Johnny.”

“I know,” Flash said, nearly breathless with excitement. “Everyone’s talking about you. About what you did for him. Thank you. Thank you.”

“I’m not… that isn’t…” Johnny said awkwardly. He cleared his throat, wondering what it was he was supposed to feel here. _I only walked through the fire for him. I’d only do it a hundred times more._

He knew now what it was to burn for someone completely.

“That’s the door to the dungeons back there,” Flash said, gesturing. “You don’t want to go that way, especially not while the Goblin King’s there. Are you lost? I know the castle is big. Come on, I’ll take you back to the royal chambers.”

Flash led the way back through the winding halls, walking with the confidence of a man who knew the castle like the back of his hand. Johnny supposed he did. He wanted to ask him how long he’d lived in it, or how long he’d known Peter, but suddenly the thought of the answer scared him. What if Flash had lived in Peter’s enchanted castle, in his kingdom west of the sun and east of the moon, for a hundred years? A thousand? What if he’d known Peter since a time before Johnny could even conceive of?

Johnny had known Peter for less than a year. The awe-filled looks Flash occasionally tossed him made his stomach twist.

Before he knew it, they were back at the royal quarters. Flash bowed deeply before the doors.

“Thank you,” he told Johnny again. “All of us, we can’t thank you enough.”

“Good night,” Johnny said.

Though the doors looked heavy, they opened at Johnny’s slightest touch. Inside, the room was just how he’d left it, the curtains fluttering in the breeze and Peter’s clothes in a heap on the floor by the bed.

Peter, still on the bed. Johnny breathed a deep sigh of relief, unaware until that moment of the fear that had gripped him: that he would return to their bed and that, once again, Peter would be gone. Grateful, he climbed back under the sheets.

Peter shifted towards him, face set in a deep frown even in slumber. Johnny combed his hair back from his forehead and watched him sleep until dawn crept over the horizon.

For the very first time, Johnny saw the morning light touch his beloved’s face, and nothing beyond that happened. No enchanted spider stole from Johnny’s bed. No Goblin King’s curse took Peter away. Peter simply slept, his skin bathed in pale rosy light.

Johnny put his head down on the pillow and closed his weary eyes.

* * *

Johnny woke to warm lips against his forehead.

“What time is it?” he asked muzzily, stretching, his eyes still closed. Peter’s huff of laughter was soft and amused.

“Too early,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep, it’s alright.”

Johnny’s eyes fluttered open. Peter’s back was to the window, and the bright sunlight streaming through it left his face in shadow. Ice flooded Johnny’s veins. He sat up too quickly. Instantly, Peter was by his side. His face was no longer shrouded; Johnny’s quick breathing slowed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Johnny said, palming his face, filled with nothing but relief. “Nothing, I promise.”

Peter cupped a hand to his, his brow still creased with worry. “My love?”

“I’m still not used to you in natural light, that’s all,” Johnny said. He’d meant to sound teasing, but instead it came out almost painfully sincere.

“Well. I hope my face isn’t too shocking a sight for you, first thing in the morning,” Peter said. His frown melted into a crooked smile.

Johnny leaned in for a kiss and Peter met him, the press of his lips soft and unhurried – at first. The kisses grew deeper, and Peter pressed Johnny back against the bed, the silk sheets soft against his skin. Johnny was panting when he drew back.

“I have to go,” Peter said, brushing Johnny’s hair back. “I’m sorry. With the Goblin King dethroned – thank you again for that -- there’s so much for me to do.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Johnny asked, sitting up and pulling the sheets around himself.

“After all you’ve done already? No,” Peter said, fishing a robe made of rich blue velvet out of an ornately carved wardrobe. The wardrobe was imposing with its dark wood and intricate design; there were webs carved into the doors and polished wooden spiders lurked hidden in the corners. “No, there’s nothing for you to worry yourself over. You have free run of the castle, of course. I expect you want to explore? This is, after all, your home now.”

“Oh,” Johnny said, glancing around. He took in the furniture and the shiny wooden floors strewn with woven rugs, the large mirror in the golden frame across the room, the plush velvet hangings of the massive bed he was in. He took in Peter himself, the powerful muscles of his back as he shrugged on his robe carelessly, running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair.

This was his home now. Of course it was. He’d come here for Peter, and this was Peter’s kingdom. Johnny was Peter’s, body and soul. Somehow it just hadn’t ever occurred to him what that meant. A little part of him had thought that they would return to _their_ castle, alone with May and Nathan, to their cozy and secluded hideaway. Now the new daylight was forcing him to confront the truth.

That had been foolish, he knew, but looking around the ornate bedroom, he couldn’t help but long for the place that had come to be home to him over the past months.

“My love?” Peter asked, glancing at him.

“It’s nothing,” Johnny him quickly, pasting on a smile.

Peter approached the bed, cupping a hand to Johnny’s cheek. He stared down into his face, like he was trying to solve a puzzle. It was a good look on him, the way he furrowed his eyebrows, the stern set of his mouth. Johnny wanted to kiss it off his face.

“You’re still tired,” he said at last. “The journey you’ve had – what you did for me – of course, you must be exhausted. I’ve been an idiot. I should get a physician, or –”

“Peter,” Johnny said, reaching up to touch his wrist. “I’m fine. It’s just – a lot all at once.”

Peter’s face softened.

“I understand,” he said. Johnny didn’t think he did, but it felt nice to hear, and it was a reminder that he wasn’t alone here, no matter how much it might feel like it in the moment. As long as he had Peter, he wasn’t alone.

“Kiss me again,” Johnny said, tilting his face up. “Then you can go.”

Peter obliged.

* * *

The castle felt different under Peter’s rule. Gone were the shadowy corners, the tattered drapes. Now people bustled everywhere, and every long stone hall felt filled with sunlight. Cobwebs still hung in the highest corners, but they were no longer torn and abandoned. Spiders spun with abandon; Johnny had never cared for them before, but now just the sight of them at the center of their webs made him smile.

A few of the larger ones seemed to follow him, almost like they were keeping watch. Johnny wondered if Peter had told them to do that or if he was just being paranoid.

Everyone in the castle was perfectly polite to him. Everyone wanted to know what they could do for him. Everyone retained a careful distance, like there was a sign hanging around Johnny’s neck saying they could look but they couldn’t touch. Property of the King.

Once upon a time, Johnny had lived alone with his sister alone together in a cabin at the edge of a forest, convinced no one would ever truly want him. Now he lived in an enchanted castle filled with people, and he was the lover of their king. Anything he wanted was merely a request away.

In some ways, Johnny felt more alone than before.

“It’s an adjustment period, dear, like any other,” May told him, standing in the shadows of the stables. She was the only one who seemed like they felt free to speak candidly with him. Everyone else Johnny had tried to talk to turned into a flurries of “yes, my lord?” and “is there anything I can do for you, my lord?” and “I’m sure it’s just as you say, my lord,” whenever he so much as opened his mouth. Even the friendly-looking guard he’d met the first night seemed too in awe of him to have a real conversation.

Johnny set his jaw and continued to brush down one of the royal horses, a beautiful chestnut mare whose coat seemed to sparkle with sunlight even in the shade. The stable hand had looked like he was about to faint when Johnny had said he’d like to care for the horses himself this afternoon, the boy wringing his hands and trying to protest without outright objecting, but for once Johnny, bored out of his skull after days of doing absolutely nothing, had taken advantage of the whole castle’s seeming inability to tell him no.

The boy now hovered just out of earshot, white-faced and eagle-eyed as if he expected to be blamed if the royal steeds trampled Johnny to death. Johnny snorted and rolled his eyes, rubbing a hand over the horse’s gleaming flank.

It felt good to be doing something. It felt good to be useful again.

“Do you ever wish you could go back?” he asked May.

“Many times,” May said. “To many places. But I try to look forward anyway. And just where is it you’d like to go back to, my dear? Are you missing your sister?”

Johnny did, and he didn’t at the same time. He knew Sue had only ever meant the best for him, that she’d only ever been concerned, but when he closed his eyes he could still perfectly recall the moment she’d pressed the little candle into his hand, and everything that happened after that. All that Peter had suffered because Johnny had been unable to resist the temptation to look at his face.

He stepped around to face the horse. She nickered at him but let him pet her velvety nose and then press his own face against hers.

“I just wish I knew how to be useful to him here,” Johnny said. “If I can be useful to him at all.”

May waited until he pulled away from the horse to ask, “Has someone told you that you aren’t useful to him?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Johnny said, stroking over the horse’s nose again. “Everyone’s been kind to me. Too kind to me. But Peter’s so busy, he has so much to do and I – I miss when it was just me and him, alone in our own world.”

He drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes. Sometimes, he felt like he could still feel the cold air against his skin, the chill radiating through the windows of that lonely castle. Or, if he opened his mouth, like he could taste fresh snow.

But when he opened his eyes it was still springtime in Peter’s kingdom, as glorious and beautiful as ever springtime was. The horse he was tended to nickered, feeling neglected, and Johnny stroked her long neck.

“Please don’t tell him I said that,” he said to May. “I know he has so many better things to do. I don’t want him to feel – obligated.”

The word left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Of course not, dear,” May said with a small smile.

* * *

That evening there was a small table in Peter’s room, set with candles and a variety of plates. Peter was waiting by his chair, practically vibrating with anxiety; he looked up as soon as Johnny entered the room, and then he smiled, that crooked smile that Johnny had learned to love before he’d ever even seen it.

Johnny had only come back to their rooms to change out of his clothes, smelling of hay and sweat as they were, in preparation for dinner. Now it seemed dinner had come to him.

“There you are,” Peter said, holding out a hand to him. “I was about to send someone out to find you. Dinner’s still warm, though.”

“Oh,” Johnny said. He gestured at his dirty clothes. “I’m not exactly dressed for it –”

“That doesn’t matter,” Peter said, waving a hand as if to brush Johnny’s concerns aside. “It’s just you and me. I don’t care what you wear – if it’s dirty or nothing at all.”

“Now who’s being dirty?” Johnny asked archly, approaching the table.

There was a variety of dishes spread out on silver plates – roast duck and potatoes, a medley of vegetables, and a tray of the little tarts Johnny had fallen in love with over the past few days, still hot from the oven.

“Do you like it?” Peter asked, a note in his voice like he somehow expected Johnny to say no. “I can send for something else –”

“No,” Johnny said quickly, taking his seat. “No, it looks perfect. Thank you. It’s just us?”

“Just us,” Peter said, smiling again. “I thought we deserved dinner just to ourselves for once.”

Dinner in the grand hall was always an affair. There were the stiff clothes and the long tables, the chatter of many voices, and all the forks in front of the place settings, the ones Johnny didn’t seem to know how to use and Peter, even with his position, didn’t seem to care to teach him. Johnny didn’t want to look foolish by asking, and Peter never said anything when his fingers hovered over the wrong spoon, but that didn’t stop the humiliation burning in the pit of Johnny’s stomach when some finely dressed lady’s eyes lingered on his choice.

It must be nice, Johnny thought sometimes, to fit so well in his own skin the way Peter seemed to.

Here, alone in the room, everything was quiet, and there was no one to care if Johnny picked up the wrong fork. It should have been nice. He should have been happy.

“We’ve never eaten together,” Johnny said.

“What?” said Peter, pausing with his fork halfway to his mouth. “We’ve eaten together every night since you freed me.”

“I didn’t mean – this is the first time we’re sitting at a table alone together,” Johnny said. He toyed with his wrongfully chosen fork. “The first time we’re sharing a meal alone, after everything. Isn’t that strange?”

When he looked up he saw Peter staring at him, still with that steady, commanding gaze. His eyebrows were knit together, the ever-present line between them deepening. This was the man Johnny had lain besides for months. Looking at him shouldn’t have felt like looking at a stranger.

Peter pushed away from the table and stood. Instantly, Johnny regretted saying anything at all.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, looking away. “I wanted – I wanted things to be perfect. For you.”

Johnny couldn’t stand the tight set of his jaw, the line between his brows, the way he clenched and unclenched his hands. He stood from the table and went to Peter, took his face between his hands and turned it towards him, searching those dark eyes.

“No,” Johnny said, “I’m sorry.”

And then they were kissing. As soon as they touched, everything felt right. Johnny felt lit up from the inside out, filled with light just at the first brush of his lips. This was always how it had worked between them – even fumbling in the dark, as soon as they put their hands on each other, it had simply felt right.

“Come to bed,” Johnny said. “Just come to bed with me.”

“Dinner will get cold,” Peter murmured. His hands found Johnny’s waist, then slid to his hips.

“Then it’ll be cold,” Johnny said. He started working on the buttons of Peter’s shirt.

“I wanted things to be perfect for you,” Peter breathed into the space between them.

Johnny slid his hand underneath Peter’s shirt to rest over his heart, right over where those three drops of wax had fallen. A warmth spread through him.

“You’re perfect for me,” he said, looking steadily into Peter’s eyes.

They tumbled together onto Peter’s huge bed and the hangings closed around them without either of them so much as lifting a finger. Johnny had gotten accustomed to that the past few days, and while the novelty had yet to wear off, it simply couldn’t compare to the feeling of Peter’s body pressed against his. Their clothes they quickly shed, tossed without care over the side of the bed – a problem for later. Much later.

It was still so new, to be with Peter like this. In the light, where they could see each other. Where Johnny could admire him properly, the way Peter deserved to be admired. He was sculpted like a statue, with a face from a storybook and a heart to match. Part of Johnny couldn’t believe he got to touch him. That he deserved to put his hands on Peter at all.

“You know, I’d planned for this part to come later,” Peter said, kissing Johnny’s lips quickly between each word. He cradled his jaw ever so gently, and it was giving Johnny all sorts of ideas, his mouth wet and begging to be filled – with Peter’s tongue, his fingers, his cock. “First dinner. Then maybe a bath. And then –"

“Shh,” Johnny said, putting his finger against Peter’s lips. Peter went a little cross-eyed focusing on it and Johnny laughed, shaking his head. “We can skip to ‘and then.’”

Peter kissed his finger and Johnny brought a hand up to his cheek, just looking at him for a moment, admiring the face he’d touched in the dark so many nights. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of looking at Peter – but there was time for looking later.

He kissed his way down Peter’s firm stomach, enjoying the way his muscles jumped under the attention. He regarded his erection critically when he got there, not entirely sure how to go about this not in the dark, it being a while since he’d done this with anyone but Peter.

“Do you need instructions, my love?” Peter asked, snickering around the words as he slid his hand into Johnny’s hair.

“Oh, shut up,” Johnny told him.

“I thought the plan was to shut you up,” Peter said, arching his eyebrows meaningfully.

“Funny,” Johnny said, rolling his eyes.

Peter was a little intimidating by the glow of the candle light, though little was by no means the word for it. His cock was long and thick, and Johnny had initially thought the size of him was a trick of the darkness. Their first night together in Peter’s castle had quickly proven him wrong on that front.

Johnny’s jaw ached in anticipation.

“Come back up here,” Peter said, as if sensing his hesitation. His voice was gentle and coaxing, as if Johnny was some spooked horse, and Johnny bristled a little. “Lie down and let me take care of you.”

Johnny narrowed his eyes in irritation and sucked in a breath, then took as much of Peter’s cock in his mouth as he could in one go. It was a foolish decision that nearly caused him to choke, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret it when Peter groaned like that.

Still, the first buck of his hips drove Johnny off, back of his hand held to his mouth as he coughed. His heart sank at the soft noise Peter made as he sat up.

“My love,” Peter said, making to pull him up and into his arms, his hands exceedingly gentle. How to tell him, Johnny wondered, how much he wanted to do this? How much he wanted to be good for Peter, to be exactly what he deserved not only in this act but in everything?

“I’m all right,” Johnny told him, trying to smile, to show Peter just how all right he was. Peter frowned, the little line between his brows deep.

“You have nothing to prove,” Peter said, his voice heavy with emotion.

Johnny didn’t think that was true. Here, in this place, he had everything to prove. That he belonged to be here. That he belonged with Peter. That he deserved a second chance after he had lit that candle and nearly doomed Peter and his entire kingdom.

If Johnny couldn’t assist Peter with matters of the throne, then matters of the bedroom would have to suffice. Peter’s cock, wet with Johnny’s spit, was still hard and waiting, and Johnny wanted more than anything to have it in his mouth again.

“Let me do this,” Johnny said. He ran his hand up Peter’s thigh. “I want to.”

Peter regarded him for a moment, the look in his eyes so serious, for more serious than anyone had ever really looked at Johnny before. Certainly not while he was naked. Then Peter nodded and Johnny smiled at him.

“I love you,” he confessed.

Before Peter could answer – because he didn’t need to hear the answer or perhaps because Johnny thought that perhaps, in some true corner of his heart, his feelings for Johnny paled in comparison to Johnny’s for him – he bent his head and took Peter’s length back in his mouth, sucking with renewed vigor.

“I, oh,” Peter said. “I love you too – obviously. Obviously. Johnny.”

His name had never sounded better than it did falling from Peter’s lips. His journey, all of his trials, had all been worth it just to hear Peter say his name in a moment of ecstasy. Johnny tried to make it good for him, hoping against hope that somehow he was the best that Peter had ever had. He chanced a look at him from beneath his eyelashes and was rewarded at the sight of Peter’s flushed face, at his closed eyes with their heavy dark lashes. One hand rested against his brow and the other – Johnny’s heart did something funny at the sight of it twisted so forcefully into the pillow that it had torn, white down feathers spilling down Peter’s knuckles and onto the sheets.

Imagining that hand twisted in his hair sent a jolt of desire through Johnny, right down to his cock. How Johnny adored him. How he wanted to be adored by him, useful to him. More than just a pretty face brought out of the cold.

“Johnny, please,” Peter said, his teeth catching briefly at his lip, leaving it red. The hand in the pillow flexed: more feathers cascaded from the torn fabric. “I’m so close…”

Johnny hummed, digging his own fingers into Peter’s hips. He pulled off slowly, so that Peter could feel it, every bit of it, the wetness of his mouth, the flat of his tongue. He swirled his tongue around the tip of Peter’s cock, gathering up the growing wetness there, and wrapped a hand around the slick shaft.

“Come on, then,” he challenged, flicking his hottest look up at Peter. The sheer heat of the moment their gazes met made his own cock throb. “I want it.”

Peter kept his eyes on him as he took him back in his mouth, and it was the thrill of being watched almost as much as the knowledge that Peter was close that made Johnny redouble his efforts. He kept one hand at Peter’s hip as if he had any hope of holding Peter, who was so strong, down, as he lovingly licked and sucked at his length, savoring every moment before Peter spilled, hot and bitter down his tongue, his hips bucking up into Johnny’s mouth as he swore.

It was almost too much. Johnny swallowed what he could even as Peter’s come dribbled from his mouth. He pulled off, gasping for air, and Peter was on him in an instant, his hands and his mouth everywhere, showering Johnny with kisses.

“You’re so beautiful,” Peter said desperately, cradling Johnny’s face in between his hands, and all Johnny could think was that he could be nothing farther from that when he was red-faced and panting, Peter’s come and his own spit smeared messy across his lips and chin. But Peter still leaned in to kiss his face, over and over, his cheekbones and nose and even his messy chin before landing on his lips, the kiss deep and all consuming.

“I missed so much, all those nights I couldn’t see you in the dark,” Peter said when they broke apart, his eyes dark with something deeper than desire. Johnny felt light-headed. “I missed so much.”

“Peter,” Johnny said, reaching up to touch his chest, but Peter was already moving, laying Johnny almost reverently back against the pillows.

Peter kissed his throat, his big hands sweeping down Johnny’s sides.

“My prince,” he murmured, kissing Johnny’s chest. Johnny twisted his fingers in the sheets. “My sunlight prince.”

* * *

“Peter?” Johnny called out, pushing away a low hanging tree branch heavy with flowers. “Peter? Are you here?”

He’d been missing since breakfast, and while Johnny assumed he’d been off doing whatever it was Peter did when he was needed by his kingdom, apparently it wasn’t so. A few hours after lunch a nervous looking page had approached Johnny to ask very timidly if he knew where the king had disappeared to.

Peter, apparently, had a longstanding habit of running off. No one else had been able to find him, so now the duty fell to Johnny.

Truth be told, he felt a nervous pang at the idea that Peter had gone missing, but he told himself that it wasn’t like last time, that Peter was simply being Peter – which meant he was being difficult.

Johnny had checked their rooms twice over, and all the halls he was familiar with, and then the kitchens where the cooks told him that the king had made off with some bread and cheese and the last they’d seen of him he’d been headed towards the gardens.

“Peter?” Johnny called again, louder this time. He’d ventured deep into the gardens, deeper than he’d gone before, and now part of him desperately wanted to find Peter just so there would be someone to guide him back to the castle. “Peter –”

He stopped, one hand against a willow tree, its drooping branches hiding him from view.

Peter and May were sitting together in the garden, in the shade of a flowering tree. Their heads were bent together, and Johnny could not hear what they were saying, but there was a look of weary amusement on Peter’s face.

May raised one steady hand to touch his cheek, and Peter let his forehead fall against hers, his eyes closed. He looked tired in that moment, and older than Johnny had ever seen him look before.

“I wish I could see his face again, myself,” May had told Johnny once, when Peter had still been cursed. When he asked how many years it had been, she’d replied, “too many.”

Johnny turned away, heat in his cheeks, feeling like he’d intruded on a moment far too private for his eyes, even if they hadn’t noticed him.

He returned to the castle and pretended he hadn’t found Peter, who reappeared at nightfall and acted like he’d never disappeared at all. Johnny let him. Some things, he understood, weren’t for him.

* * *

“Your Highness!”

The voice startled Johnny out of his cat nap. He’d been lying in the gardens, enjoying the bright sunlight. Living his whole life up until this point in a land where the snow fell almost all year round and the cold never ceased, he hadn’t realized what he’d been missing. In Peter’s kingdom, under Peter’s rule, the days were sunny and bright, and Johnny often felt he could soak up the sunlight through his very skin. Napping in the gardens had quickly become one of his favorite things.

He sat up, instantly alert, as a young strawberry blond page jogged towards him. His name was Billy, Johnny distantly recalled, and he followed Peter around like a puppy whenever he got the chance.

Johnny understood the feeling, but that didn’t mean he liked it all that much.

“Yes?” he said, flicking grass from his trousers.

“Your Highness,” Billy said, stopping to brace his hands against his thighs as he panted, red-faced and clearly exhausted from running. Johnny’s petty jealousy faded into concern. “It’s the king – he’s in his rooms and --!”

Johnny didn’t need to hear anything more. He was on his feet instantly, sprinting for the castle as fast as his legs would carry him. The soft grass of the grounds gave way to hard stone floors and Johnny pushed himself faster, nearly careening into a passing servant as he ran.

“Peter!” he called, pushing open the heavy doors to their rooms.

A miniature waterfall falling onto his head stopped him dead in his tracks. The cold shock startled him, wet cascading over his hair and down his back, and for a minute he stood there, blinking and stunned, wondering what had just happened.

Then Peter burst out laughing.

“Oh, I was so worried,” he said, slapping his knee as he guffawed, “that someone would get here before you and then I wouldn’t get to see the look on your face –!”

Johnny glanced up. There was a now empty bucket rigged precariously over the door, and Johnny was covered in freezing cold water.

“You --?” he said. “You sent that boy out to fetch me for a _prank_?”

Peter’s only answer was more wild laughter. Johnny only felt confused and wet, his panic slowly fading but annoyance creeping up steadily on its heels.

“I thought something had happened!” Johnny said, scrubbing furiously at his wet face and hair. “I thought you were hurt or – or worse!”

Peter only kept snickering. Johnny could have strangled him for it all, not just the water but for making him relive the fear he’d felt in those days before he’d freed Peter from the Goblin King’s grasp, never knowing if he’d seen Peter for the very last time. And now Peter was _laughing_ at him.

“That wasn’t very nice, dear,” May said from where she sat knitting in her customary corner. Her tone was flat but her eyes shining. Peter was too busy laughing to respond. “Aren’t you going to apologize?”

“I’m so sorry, my love,” Peter said, not sounding very sorry at all as he leaned in. He smacked a brief kiss to Johnny’s lips, his fingers lightly gripping Johnny’s chin. “I couldn’t resist. You know how lovely I think you are all wet.”

“Peter!” May said, sounding scandalized in earnest now.

“From being out in the rain, Aunt May,” Peter added, giving Johnny a more chaste kiss on the cheek. “Only out in the rain.”

“Pete!” a new voice called as a blond head stuck around the doorway. It was the knight from the first evening, the one who had thanked Johnny for bringing Peter back to them. He turned red when he caught sight of May and Johnny. “I mean, Your Majesty –!”

“Flash,” Peter said, the corner of his lips twitching at the informal slip. “What is it?”

“Sword practice,” Flash said, still red to the tips of his ears. “You’re late. Again.”

“Ah,” Peter said, stretching his arms high above his head and cracking his knuckles. “That eager for me to knock you on your ass again, are you?”

He seemed almost manically cheerful today, like he had too much energy for his human body. Maybe sword practice would beat it out of him, Johnny thought, scowling as cold water dripped off the tip off his nose.

“ _You’re_ out of practice,” Flash bit back, but he was grinning. “I’m not. We’ll see who ends up on whose ass.” He shot another cautious glance at May. “I mean, Your Majesty.”

“I’ll see you later, my love,” Peter said, pressing another kiss to Johnny’s cheek before he practically swanned out, a skip in his step – over the prank or the promise of a sword fight, Johnny didn’t know. “And I’ll be checking the doors!”

“What in seven hells has gotten into him?” Johnny asked, giving a still laughing Peter’s back a sideways glare as he accepted a towel from May.

“Oh, he’s just up to his old tricks again,” May said, sighing. There was fondness in her tone. Her gaze was fixed on her needlework as she shook her head. “I wish you could have known him when his uncle was still alive. The pair of them – you’d have thought _they_ were the court jesters.” She laughed. “They tortured – well, they tortured everyone, really.”

“I can’t imagine it,” Johnny said.

“He’s been away too long,” May said, that deep sadness in her eyes back in her eyes. “He might be home, but part of him is still lost. He’s learning how to be himself again.”

Johnny watched through the window as Peter and his knight appeared on the grounds. Peter laughed, his head thrown back, at something his guard had said. Flash looked at him with a warm smile on his face, and something nostalgic in his eyes. Johnny remembered the first time Peter had truly made him laugh, telling jokes and spinning tall tales in the dark, his hands held above them making shapes Johnny had to reach up to feel. The way he’d tangled their fingers together at Johnny’s first touch.

“Is this more like him?” he asked. It felt wrong, that he had to ask it at all. He wondered if Peter would have liked him, if they’d met before everything.

“Yes and no,” May said, smiling sadly. “He’s changed. We all have. You too, my dear.”

“Have I?” Johnny asked, surprised.

“Oh, yes,” May said. “In more ways than I think any of us truly know.”

A shiver ran up Johnny’s spine. He thought about walking through the flames, and the way cold felt different now, and about his new life here with Peter, and how strange it felt to be allowed to be part of something so much bigger than him. About how Peter felt so much larger than life, constantly, and how maybe Johnny hadn’t changed at all actually, and he was still just plain Johnny Storm who came from a little house in a little village that always had snow on the ground.

He didn’t want to think about any of it right now.

“Here,” he said, leaning forward. He held his hands out. “I’ll hold your yarn for you.”

* * *

At first, Johnny wasn’t sure what had awoken him. It was a still night, quiet without even a breeze to flutter the curtains. The air was soft and sweet and Johnny’s head lay pillowed against Peter’s shoulder, Peter’s arm wrapped securely around him. If it had been some dream that woke him, then Johnny could no longer remember it.

Peter slept on, undisturbed. Johnny felt hazy, his skin crawling. All at once the air seemed to crackle, and then grow heavy. The strange music he’d heard his first night in the castle seemed to once again creep through the room, and Johnny’s breath caught in his throat.

Something moved in the dark, creeping across the floor. At first, Johnny thought he was still dreaming. But Peter was warm against him, his naked chest moving up and down underneath Johnny’s palm, and the breeze that blew through the window was sweet with just a hint of spring’s chill.

Johnny wasn’t dreaming. There was something in the room.

It was an amorphous shape, blacker than black and slick as oil. It moved all wrong, spilling more than sliding across the floor, like it couldn’t be contained. Something icy caught in Johnny’s throat; watching it, he found he couldn’t move.

The shape moved towards the bed – and then it moved up it. It slid across the sheets, liquid as blood and reaching for them. Johnny wanted to shout, but whatever the thing was, it seemed like it had stolen his voice.

He watched with frozen horror as it touched the back of Peter’s hand.

Peter was going to wake up, Johnny told himself. Peter would feel that thing against his skin, and he’d wake up. This was Peter’s kingdom. Peter would know what that thing was. Peter would know how to stop it.

Peter’s fingers twitched, then stilled. The thing slid up his wrist, twining sinuous up his arm to his shoulder and spreading over his chest.

Then, as soon as it had appeared, it was gone. Disappeared, like it had been blown away by the night’s breeze.

After a moment, Johnny felt himself begin to unfreeze. It _had_ been a dream, he told himself, still shaken by the sight of the black ooze spreading across the sheets, and across Peter’s tan skin. It had all been a dream, and he’d only just now awakened.

“Peter,” he said, reaching up to touch his sleeping lover’s face. He felt ridiculous, like a child needing comfort after a nightmare, but he needed to hear Peter’s voice, to be wrapped up in his arms and share his warmth. To chase the memory of that thing away. “Peter – wake up.”

Peter head lolled towards him, and Johnny sprang back with a cry of alarm.

Gone was Peter’s face. The thing was back, coating Peter’s skin in rainbow-slick black ooze. Huge white eyes stared milky and unseeing up at Johnny, and his mouth split wide, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth. The thing’s – Peter’s – breath came damp and hot across Johnny’s face as a long red tongue lolled out of his mouth and Johnny was screaming, he couldn’t stop screaming.

He fell off the bed in his rush to get away from the thing that had seized his lover’s face, and landed hard on the floor, tangled in the sheets and the blankets. They were choking him, like that black ooze that had taken over Peter, silk sheets sliding against his skin thick as oil. He couldn’t get free.

There were hands on him, tearing at him, suffocating him, choking him – it was the thing in Peter’s body, he knew, he knew, he knew, and it was going to kill him.

“Johnny!”

Light flooded the room. Peter was leaning over him, his face his own again, with nothing but naked concern on it.

Johnny’s heart beat hard as a jack rabbit.

“Johnny,” Peter said, palming his cheek. His eyebrows were knit together fiercely. Johnny had never been so glad to see his eyes. He shuddered, remembering the pale opal sheen of the monster’s. “Johnny, what’s the matter?”

Gasping, Johnny managed to free his arms from the tangled bedding and threw them around Peter’s neck, clinging tightly to him. Peter ran a soothing hand up his back.

“My love?” he said.

“There was a monster,” he gasped. “There was a monster and it was on the bed and it slithered over you --!”

Peter gentled a hand through his hair, cutting off Johnny’s desperate rambling with a shushing sound.

“A dream, my love,” he said, raking those long fingers soothingly through Johnny’s hair. He breathed out a gentle sigh of relief, his breath ruffling Johnny’s hair. “It was only a bad dream. There are no monsters in my castle. There, it’s alright now.”

Johnny wanted badly to believe him, but he had dreamed that creature before, so long ago he had almost forgotten. It had happened in Peter’s former castle, when Peter had only been able to come to him as a man in the darkest night. But it had only been a dream, Johnny had told himself since then. Only a dream brought on by the uncertainty of Peter’s hidden face.

He opened his mouth to tell him, but the words died on his tongue as Peter pulled back, his hands at Johnny’s shoulders. His gaze was warm and comforting, his hands strong and grounding. He was right; it had only been a dream, and now Johnny was behaving like a stupid child, afraid of a simple nightmare.

“Let’s go back to bed,” Peter said. He coaxed Johnny up from the floor, his palms warm against Johnny’s, and fetched the pile of blankets as Johnny climbed back into bed. He spread the blankets over him and smoothed them out, and didn’t comment when Johnny turned onto his side and curled in on himself.

The lights dimmed to a dull glow as Peter got back into bed.

“There now,” he said, settling against Johnny. He put his arm around him, rubbing comforting circles on his back as Johnny tucked his face into the crook of Peter’s neck. “It’s alright, it was just a dream. There are no monsters here.”

But, Johnny thought, right before he dropped off to sleep again, what Peter said hadn’t been true. He thought of the locked dungeon door and shuddered.

There was at least one monster in this castle.

* * *

Johnny had to wait for the brief little window of time between the changing shifts of the guards that stood in front of the dungeon entrance, doing his best to lurk just out of sight. When finally he saw his chance, he slipped through the door as quietly and as quickly as he could. He knew, even as he descended the steps, that what he was doing was a terrible idea. But then he thought of the monster in the dark and took another step down the dark stone stairway, and another, and another.

The air got colder and colder the further into the dungeons Johnny descended; by contrast, he found himself getting warmer and warmer. It wasn’t an unpleasant heat, more of a banked fire in his chest – when he held his hand in front of him in the gloom, it seemed to glow from within with a golden light.

What had he done to himself, in his efforts to save his prince?

“What’s that shining in the dark?” a low voice called from the end of the hall. Johnny came to a stop in front of the last cell and found himself confronted by a far too bright pair of green eyes. “A little flame trying to hold back the darkness… Could it be the king’s dear firebird?”

Johnny hadn’t thought of what he’d say when he found the Goblin King, and suddenly he found he had no words at all. The Goblin King looked more monstrous than ever before, hunched on the cold stone floor and locked behind iron bars. He was chained and shackled, his green and purple regalia dirty and ragged. He grinned at Johnny, revealing a row of sharp fangs. He remembered, with a sudden sweep of revulsion, those smirking lips being pressed to his.

Without meaning to, he took a step back.

“What’s the matter?” Norman asked. That smirk widened. “Spider got your tongue? I know I certainly did.”

“Don’t,” Johnny said. Steeling himself – he wasn’t the one behind the bars – he stepped forward again and, falling to one knee, regarded the man before him.

Norman’s hands curled around the bars. His nails were long and gnarled, his fingers tinged green.

“Why did you come down here, little firebird?” he asked. “What were you hoping to see? A ruined man? Were you hoping I’d forgive you your transgressions? Wandering into a world not your own and taking everything from me?” His eyes glimmered. “Or did you hope to find a desperate man who would reveal to you all your beloved’s secrets? Those hidden things locked deep inside his heart.”

“Peter doesn’t keep secrets from me,” Johnny said. He knew immediately that it was a mistake – and that it wasn’t true.

“Now don’t tell me you’re really as stupid as you look,” Norman scoffed. He shifted back, away from the bars, regarding Johnny with those glowing green eyes. “I suppose you want to know why I did it.”

“No,” Johnny lied.

“That’s interesting, because I’d very much like to know how _you_ did it,” Norman said, his tone deceptively light. “You fought so hard for him – and the whole time, you must have been thinking it, didn’t you? That little thought in the back of your head.”

“No,” Johnny said again, fear gripping him tight.

“Does he _really_ love me?” the Goblin King simpered, his face fixed in a grotesque parody of a lover’s sorrow. “Or does he simply need some pretty, simple little thing, all too ready to believe in a lie to free him from his curse and return him to his kingdom? He could have chosen anyone, couldn’t he? Princes and princesses and loyal knights just dying for his affection. But he chose some poor boy all alone on the edge of the forest, who _needed_ his favor.”

“Stop it,” Johnny said. “You don’t know. It wasn’t like that.”

Except it was. It had been exactly like that, in the beginning.

“So there must have been some trick, then,” Norman said, flexing his long goblin claws around the iron bars of his cell. “Some little magic guarantee. Who would be so stupid to walk through fire for the love of one cursed liar?” He tilted his head, running his tongue along the razor sharp edge of his teeth. His eyes glimmered. “What did you trade for it, I wonder? What piece of your soul?”

“I came down here to ask you questions,” Johnny said, an angry fire suddenly burning deep down in his chest. “Not the other way around, Goblin.”

“Ah,” Norman said, his voice taking on a note of understanding. “You don’t even know. Poor little fool, you _were_ willing to burn for him, weren’t you? You didn’t even care, you stupid thing, if he even loved you back.”

“I knew he did,” Johnny said, but the words came out hollow to his own ears. The Goblin King’s menacing grin widened.

“Did you think you could walk in the shadow of death and not be changed?” Norman asked, eyes glimmering. “His first love made that mistake, too.”

“ENOUGH!” an inhuman voice rang out, resonant and strange. It seemed to travel on the spider’s webs in the dungeon’s corners, to ring in Johnny’s bones. It came from everywhere in the room, but especially from behind him.

He turned and saw Peter standing on the steps, half-hidden by the gloom – but never as he’d seen him before. Peter was neither, in that second, the man nor the spider, but a blend of the two. Eight eyes glimmered ruby red in the darkness, and long, spindly legs seemed to sprout from his back. He was bent and twisted, but he seemed taller than ever. Fangs bit into the lips that had kissed Johnny awake that morning.

Suddenly, Johnny was frightened of him.

It was instinct that he flung his hand up, but what made the fire ignite from his skin, even he didn’t know. It sprang from within him, and it didn’t burn him.

Peter stepped forward, not back. The extra eyes faded from his face. The spindly, hairy legs folded into him and disappeared, and then he was just Peter again, Johnny’s own Peter, the man he loved. The man he’d been prepared to burn for.

The knowledge didn’t make the fright go away, nor the fire extinguish. Johnny held up his hands in front of his face, staring at the flames.

“Johnny,” Peter said, wonder in his voice.

The Goblin King laughed, high and menacing.

“Oh, you’ve scared him, the dear thing,” Norman said. “Look at him, he’s trembling, poor little bird. Look at what you’ve brought him into, all in the name of love.” His eyes glimmered as he looked at Peter, his lips curved into a victorious smile. “Look at what you’ve done. He’s burning for you all over again.”

“Don’t talk about him,” Peter commanded, sweeping down the rest of the stairs. “Don’t you even look at him, Norman.”

“Still thinking you can give me orders,” the Goblin King drawled. “That’s what got you in trouble in the first place, if you remember. Turning my own son away from me.”

“Johnny, go upstairs,” Peter said. The firelight threw strange shadows across his face, twisting his features. Ruby red spider’s eyes glimmered just under his skin, six of them dotted down his face and glowing like embers.

“Tsk, tsk, dear boy, where’s that vaunted control?” Norman asked. “You’ve been slipping lately, haven’t you? It’s not as easy as it used to be, holding the anger back. You can almost feel it under your skin…”

“What the hell are you talking about, Goblin?” Peter demanded, his hands clenched into tight fists. “Don’t play games with me. You aren’t in the position to anymore.”

“Oh, my king. Games with you are the only thing I have left to play,” the Goblin King said.

“This is my kingdom,” Peter said, talking over him. His voice was rising dangerously, louder and louder, and his expression was twisted into something ugly, “and you will _do as I say_.”

The last words echoed through the damp stone halls. Johnny drew in a shaky breath.

Peter suddenly whirled on him, the blue velvet robe he was wearing over his open shirt flaring out. Something dark flashed through his eyes, mysterious and terrible, there one minute and gone the next.

“As for you –” he started, his voice a cruel bark like Johnny had never heard before. Abruptly, as if he’d heard it himself, Peter stopped and drew in a deep breath. His hands clenched and then relaxed as he seemed to shake off whatever had come over him.

“Peter?” Johnny said, reaching out for him, but Peter took a step back.

“Go upstairs, Johnny,” he said. His tone was much like his usual gentle one, but with something darker lurking underneath.

Norman laughed, high and menacing, grinning at them through the bars.

“You don’t want him to see,” he leered at Peter. “The monster in the man.”

“Go upstairs,” Peter repeated to Johnny. Johnny shook his head desperately, unwilling to leave Peter here, alone, with the Goblin King. He felt sure that if he did, something terrible would happen.

“But you’ve seen it already,” Norman said to Johnny. It felt like those green eyes could see right through them. He felt the phantom touch of Norman’s fingers at his throat. “You know.”

“Know what?” Peter asked, gazing first at Norman, and then, after a minute, at Johnny. Johnny watched him grow less and less sure. “Johnny?”

But Johnny felt frozen to the spot. His blood ran cold despite the flames that still flickered just under his skin. Norman’s smile widened.

“You’ve seen it, creeping in the dark,” he said.

“Yes,” Johnny said before he could stop himself.

Norman’s grin widened as that haunting gaze flickered to Peter.

“My little servant. I found it in the dark, all alone and seeking purpose. Well, I gave it one,” Norman said. “It’ll eat you from the inside out. Bond itself deep into the very marrow of your bones and feed off your rage, twisting and turning you. It won’t stop until there’s nothing left of you at all. It’s pure venom.” He turned his glowing green gaze on Johnny. “But then you already knew that, didn’t you? Deep down in the pit of your stomach, you knew.”

“Norman,” Peter said, his voice shaking. At first, Johnny thought it was in fear. Then he realized it was in fury. “What did you do?”

“My dear king,” Norman said, teeth flashing as he grinned. “Did you think I only laid one curse? You should know me better than that.”

“Johnny,” Peter said stiffly. Every line of him was stock still, but Johnny could see just how hard it was for him to keep himself from lunging. They both knew that was what Norman wanted. “Upstairs. Now.”

“I won’t leave you,” Johnny said, stepping towards him.

“ _Now!_!” Peter shouted, sweeping one hand out. The anger in his voice was back double fold.

Maybe, Johnny would think later, Peter had sensed it, the darkness welling up inside, the Goblin King’s curse so barely contained within his own body, and so he’d told Johnny to run in an attempt to protect him from it, to keep him from seeing it. Peter always tried so hard to protect everyone that way.

In the moment, though, he stood rooted to the spot; he couldn’t have left Peter, not for anything in the world. Part of him had been hurt, unable to understand why Peter wanted to send him away so badly. How he could bear to be separated from him in this moment. He was so focused on him he missed the widening of Norman’s smile.

“Arise, my servant,” he said, one clawed hand reaching through the bars towards Peter. “It’s time for you to show yourself.”

It happened so fast that Johnny barely had time to react. The curse started from the inside out. Peter gasped, his head thrown back, and he raised one hand to his throat like he was choking. The blackness first spilled from his lips, an awful torrent that was slick as blood. It spun its way around him like a spider cocooning its prey in silk, covering every inch of Peter from head to toe, smothering him in inky darkness.

Fear, the likes of which he hadn’t known since the moment those three drops of wax had landed on Peter’s chest, gripped Johnny tight. He reached out a hand, but it was too late.

Peter turned to face him, coated in inky black – all except for two spots, wide and unseeing where his eyes had been, and his chest, upon which was splashed a stain, white and wet like ghostly blood, in the shape of a spider. It was ugly, and twisted, and nothing like Peter at all.

The Goblin King’s mad laughter echoed off the dungeon’s walls.

“Peter,” Johnny said, his heart beating like mad beneath his breast. “Peter, are you in there? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, Peter,” the Goblin King sneered. “Answer your pretty firebird, won’t you?”

Peter – or the thing that had been Peter just moments before – opened his mouth, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth. A long tongue, red as blood, lolled out from his mouth like he couldn’t control it.

It was the creature from Johnny’s nightmares, all those months ago in the dark of the lonely little castle he had lived in alone with Peter. It was the one he had seen the night before, the one he had convinced himself was just a dream.

This was no dream. The creature before him was as real as he was.

“ _John-nee_ ,” it rasped, words mangled by needle sharp teeth and too long tongue. “ _Help meee._ ”

It didn’t sound like Peter, not really. The voice was strange, almost like a hum he could feel in his bones, but there was something of Peter lurking just underneath it, and that made Johnny’s heart leap into his throat.

“Yes, Johnny, help him,” the Goblin King cackled. “Perhaps a kiss from his one true love will break the spell? There’s no way to tell until you try.”

Peter turned to look at Norman with milky white eyes. He snarled at him, a roar that built up in chest and echoed through the stone. It only made Norman laugh all the harder.

“ _Osborrrn,_ ,” he howled, and Johnny had never heard someone sound so full of rage or pain. “ _I’ll kill you_.”

“Please,” the Goblin King said, beckoning to him with one gnarled claw. “I’d love to see you try.”

Peter reared back, his back arching in an inhuman fashion as he lashed out. His fingers were unnaturally long and curled, the tips glinting in the gloom like light off the edge of a sword.

Johnny had no love for the Goblin King, but he had no wish to see him slaughtered by the monster that had overtaken Peter, either, and it occurred to him with a sick lurch that if the Goblin King died, there might be no one to reverse the curse. Perhaps Peter would be stuck as this beast forever, stuck in that monstrous body.

He moved without thinking, grabbing Peter’s arm on the upswing. The darkness coating his body was almost liquid beneath Johnny’s fingers. It felt hot, too, and almost pulsating, and just the touch of it made Johnny feel sick to the pit of his stomach. He clung on with all his strength.

The monster didn’t like that. It twisted in Johnny’s grip, slippery as a snake and hissing with rage. It turned to look at him, its neck at an unnatural angle, and its milky white eyes were terrifying. Johnny could see nothing of Peter in them. But Peter _was_ in there.

“Peter,” he said, trying with all his might to turn him towards him, but Peter was far stronger than him already and the accursed thing covering him only seemed to make him stronger. Johnny’s heels slid perilously on the stone floor. “Peter, come back to me. You must come back to me.”

The creature hesitated, its blood slick skin pulsing beneath Johnny’s touch, and Johnny’s breath caught in his throat.

“He wants you to go to him, my pet,” the Goblin King hissed, nothing but malice in his voice. “Why don’t you give him what he wants? Kill him.”

Johnny’s eyes widened. Peter wouldn’t, he knew. Peter couldn’t.

But the thing before him was no longer solely Peter, and the Goblin King’s hold on the monster went deep.

Its tongue flicked out, too hot and too wet, tasting the line of Johnny’s throat as it raised one sharp fingered hand high, claws glinting in the dim light, and Johnny couldn’t let go of him, but he knew that it couldn’t end like this for him, either. Peter would never forgive himself.

The flames burst from his skin without thought or command from him. He didn’t realize, at first, what had happened – only that the monster’s swing had stopped and that the dungeons suddenly seemed much brighter, yellow-orange light dancing on the walls. There was a warmth deep in his chest, bright and comforting.

The creature roared, reeling back from Johnny’s fire. It seemed to almost melt away, retreating back to where it had come from beneath Peter’s skin. Peter, freed from it, gasped. His face was bloodless and his eyes wide.

However frightened Johnny had been looking at him, he couldn’t imagine how Peter had felt, trapped in that monstrous, alien form.

The Goblin King’s smile had also faded.

“What did you do?” he demanded, his gnarled claws wrapping around the iron bars. His burning gaze fell upon Johnny and Johnny’s flaming hands and his green-tinged lips curled back in a snarl. “It was _you_.”

Again without any command from Johnny, the fire extinguished itself. Like the spell had been broken, Peter sprang into action, moving forward and putting himself between Johnny and the Goblin King. Johnny didn’t miss the way his hands still shook.

“Johnny, upstairs, now!” he said.

Johnny didn’t want to be in the dungeons anymore, not after what he’d just seen, so it was an easy order to follow. His heart beating hard in his chest, he’d reached the first step before the thought struck him, and he turned back, desperate to see Peter behind him and suddenly terribly afraid that he wouldn’t follow. Afraid he’d stay down there, with the Goblin King.

“Go!” Peter shouted. “I’m right behind you. Whatever you do, don’t look back!”

The note of urgency in Peter’s voice spurred him into action. Johnny took the steps two at a time, the Goblin King’s wild laughter chasing at his heels. Halfway up, he slipped, barking his shins painfully on the stone steps and nearly falling. Strong hands caught him, hauling him back to his feet, and together he and Peter raced the rest of the way up the stairs until, together, they practically fell through the dungeon doors.

The high, mocking laughter was silenced as the doors slammed shut of their own accord. The only sound in the marble hall was the soft breeze through the trees, the chirping of birds, and Johnny’s own panicked breathing, by far the loudest thing.

It took him a moment to glance behind him. Peter was only Peter again, for all appearances an ordinary flesh and blood man. He was breathing hard from the run, his hair ruffled and his robe askew. Gone were the spider’s legs and the glowing red eyes, and gone was the rainbow-slick pulsating black oil that had coated him from head to toe.

But Johnny knew now that they both lurked there, just underneath his skin, and he swallowed, his throat tight.

“Peter,” he said, softly.

Peter looked up and his eyes were wild. Johnny had only seen such an expression on his face once before, when Johnny had challenged the Goblin King the first time.

“What,” he hissed, “were you thinking? How could you go down there, and all alone? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you if I hadn’t gone looking for you? How dangerous he is?” He swept an arm out, his hand slicing through the air. “Do you have any idea how stupid that was, Johnny?”

“I know it was foolish,” Johnny defended, still shaken by everything that had happened in the dungeons. “And I know I shouldn’t have gone down there, not alone, but I had to… had to…”

He trailed off, lost for the right words. He didn’t know himself why he’d had to go down into the dungeons, only that he had, and that he didn’t regret it, not even as frightened as he was.

“You shouldn’t have gone down there,” Peter said, his hands clenched and his shoulders tight with fury. His voice was low and restrained, but Johnny could tell he wanted to shout again and was only just barely holding himself back. “You shouldn’t have gone to see him.”

“I’ve already told you I know it was a stupid thing to do,” Johnny said, reaching out to touch Peter’s arm.

“It was!” Peter cut him off, whirling on him. Johnny remembered with an icy hot jolt the spindly legs, the fangs, the eight eyes. He stepped back, heart beating fast, remembering the monster sliding over Peter in the dark, oily and black, fangs glimmering in the moonlight. “Do you have any idea what I could have done? What he could have made me do? I could have _killed you_!”

His voice was too harsh, his words too biting. Johnny was reminded of cold nights and the wind howling in their small cabin and his father’s angry voice, a very, very long time ago. Before he knew what was happening, the flames had sprung from his skin again. Johnny stared at them in shock, turning his hand this way and that. The flames burned, but there was no pain and his skin didn’t blister or crack. He still flung himself backwards, hastily putting distance between himself and Peter lest he burn him.

“Johnny,” Peter said. The anger was gone from his voice, replaced by a quiet wonder. “Johnny, how are you doing that?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny confessed, looking up at him. He held his hands out helplessly between them. “It doesn’t – it doesn’t hurt. How can I be on fire and not burn?”

“You did it once before,” Peter said, after a moment.

That was true enough. Johnny had walked through fire to free his prince, but he had never truly believed that that was his own doing. On his way to find Peter and break his curse, he’d encountered many strange beings, each of them more than human. There was no such magic in him.

At least, that was what he’d thought.

The flames sputtered and faded, lingering for a moment at the tips of his fingers before they extinguished themselves. Johnny spread his fingers in wonderment.

“Here,” Peter said tenderly, reaching for him.

He cradled Johnny’s hands in his own, so gentle. He was the man again, with none of the spider in him. In the moment, Johnny could pretend that there were no monsters lurking just out of sight underneath his skin, no curses yet to be undone.

Peter raised Johnny’s hands to his lips and kissed the backs of them.

“This is my fault,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. My love, I’m so, so sorry.”

“What’s happening to me?” Johnny asked him. “That fire…”

“I don’t know,” Peter said, tenderly kissing the knuckles that had only moments before been covered in flame. He lifted his gaze, the spider eyes burning beneath his skin once more. “But I know someone who can help us figure it out.”

* * *

It was well past midnight when he and Peter stole from the main castle, out into the courtyard. Their faces were hidden by a pair of plain cloaks Peter had pulled from a hidden panel in his wardrobe, the hoods drawn up high so no one would recognize them.

“Where are we going? Why all the secrecy?” Johnny had asked as they’d dressed, but Peter had only held a finger to his lips.

“You must never tell anyone where I’m taking you,” he said as they slipped through the gardens. Johnny had never been this deep into them and, had he been alone, wasn’t sure he could have found his way back in the dark, but Peter moved like he knew the way like the back of his hand. “Not the guards. Not even May. King I might be, but there are places… there are places even a king is forbidden to go.”

“You say it’s forbidden, but we’re still going,” Johnny said.

Peter only squeezed his hand in answer.

There was a high wall surrounding the garden. Peter knelt down when they got to it, lacing his fingers together to make a step for Johnny.

“How will you get over it?” Johnny asked, bracing his foot against Peter’s hands.

Peter’s eyes glimmered in the light of the lantern.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” he said. “I have my ways.”

Johnny had only just hoisted himself over the top of wall when a dark shape vaulted over it. He blinked and Peter was staring up at him from the other side. In spite of the secrecy and the somber mood he’d had all evening, there was a grin on his face as he held out his hands.

“Need someone to catch you, my love?” he asked, a teasing lilt to his voice. Johnny had half a mind to land on him just to shut him up. Instead, he carefully lowered himself down, only half-tempted to try and kick Peter as he fell, landing in a crouch on the damp grass.

“You’re infuriating,” he told Peter, who merely shrugged, still looking altogether too pleased with himself.

The look of smug satisfaction on Peter’s face faded, though, as he turned and looked into the distance. Johnny squinted, trying to make out what it was Peter was staring at, and then he saw it.

A high tower rose out of the shadows, tall enough that Johnny didn’t know how he’d never noticed it before, even as far away from the castle as it was. It was very tall and made of some sort of stone that seemed to glow iridescent in the darkness, and surely, Johnny thought, he would have had to have seen it before, but he hadn’t. There was only one door and it was barred by iron.

Peter produced no key. When he placed his palm against the door it swung open with a long, low creak. The landing ahead of them was dark. There was a thick carpet of dust on the floor, and it made Johnny’s nose itch.

Peter held a lantern in one hand, illuminating a circular staircase, and he took Johnny’s with the other.

“You can listen to this man. You _should_ listen to him. He can teach you to harness it, how to control it. Where it came from,” he said as they climbed, Johnny trailing behind him. The lantern barely lit the way, casting strange, twisting shadows on the walls. “But by no means should you trust him. He’s a trickster, a liar, a…”

He trailed off, his grip on Johnny’s hand tightening.

“What?” Johnny pressed.

“A spider,” Peter said, voice bitter. “Like me.”

The door at the top of the stairs was also barred with iron bands. It opened at Peter’s slightest touch, swinging open into a dark room. The air smelled musty, like no one had been inside for a long time. Johnny had the sense of something ancient and foreboding, but Peter stepped into the room fearlessly.

Johnny, like always, followed after him.

Something skittered across the dark ceiling, the movement barely perceptible in the dark.

“Don’t play games with me, old man,” Peter said, setting the lantern down on a nearby table. “I’ve had just about enough of them.”

The shape dropped from the ceiling, landing in a crouch on the floor. The flickering candlelight revealed it to be a man, shorter and older than either of them, with a wiry build and a shock of white hair. His eyes glimmered with a clever light.

“My prince,” he said. “Or rather, my king now, I heard. It’s been a long time.”

“Ezekiel,” Peter replied. “It would’ve been longer, if I’d had my way.”

“You’ve brought a guest,” Ezekiel said. His eyes fell to their linked hands. “More than a guest. My king has found a lover.” He paused, then shrugged. “Well, another lover.”

Heat rose in Johnny’s cheeks as he glanced at Peter, but Peter only stared straight ahead at Ezekiel.

“Don’t play games with him, either,” he said.

“No games,” Ezekiel said, his hands held up in front of him. “Congratulations is all I meant. You know I’ve never wished you anything but well.”

Peter snorted and dropped Johnny’s hand.

Johnny, suddenly anchorless, leaned in to whisper, “Who is he?”

“Ezekiel betrayed me,” Peter said. “He tried to have me killed.”

“It was years ago,” Ezekiel said, waving a hand. “And a matter of practicality. I bore you no ill will.”

“That’s a great comfort to me,” Peter said, dry and sarcastic, his arms folded over his chest.

“Oh, don’t be like that, Peter,” Ezekiel said. “Grudges are bad for your health.” He gestured around the room, which was mostly bare, the lantern throwing strange shadows onto the stone walls. “I’d offer you both a chair to sit, but I’m afraid my cell isn’t quite outfitted for company. But please, take the cot.”

“We’ll stand,” Peter said coldly.

“Ah,” Ezekiel said, squinting at Peter’s face. He started to circle him; Peter turned with him, never once breaking his gaze. “You’ve been cursed.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“More than once,” Ezekiel observed, raising a hand to stroke his chin in contemplation.

“I’m aware,” Peter said, his teeth gritted. Johnny turned to look at him, shocked; up until now, Peter hadn’t acknowledged the Goblin King’s promise of a second curse at all. Peter stared straight ahead at Ezekiel even as he tightened his grip on Johnny’s hand. “I’m handling it. I’m here to find out what’s happening to Johnny.”

“You’re too independent, Peter. It’s always been one of your biggest problems,” Ezekiel said, waving a dismissive hand. “You need to learn to accept help when it’s being offered.”

“I don’t think I have to take advice from the man who tried to have me killed,” Peter said.

Ezekiel’s eyes glittered in the candlelight. “You say that like I’m the only one. Killing’s easy, king of spiders. Cursing is hard.”

“I told you I’m not here for me,” Peter said. “Johnny, show him.”

“I don’t know how,” Johnny said, holding his hands out in front of him. They stayed as they were – flesh and blood, free of the flames. “I don’t know how to make it start.” He thought of walking through the fire, of burning the Goblin King, and of the time his hand had burst into flames in the dungeons. “It’s always just… happened.”

He stared hard at his hands, willing them to burst into flames the way they had before, but nothing happened.

“What exactly am I supposed to be seeing?” Ezekiel asked, one white eyebrow raised.

It was Peter who explained. Johnny’s origins, his journey and his bargain, his walk through the flames and his defeat of the Goblin King, and now the strange flames that had covered Johnny’s body and yet left him unharmed. He skimmed over, Johnny noted, his own parts in the story: his exile, his imprisonment, and Goblin King’s second curse, the horrible monster lurking just beneath his skin. Ezekiel listened silently, but there was a knowing look in his eyes, as if he was mentally cataloguing all of the little silences, the parts that Peter had left out.

“And you’d never demonstrated any talent for magic before?” he asked Johnny when Peter had finished his tale.

“No,” Johnny said, shaking his head. No one had magic in the town where he came from, and hadn’t for a very long time, but he felt foolish mentioning that in a place so full of it. “I never had much of a talent for anything, except for fixing things. Clocks and carriage wheels and things like that.”

“As if there is no magic in the fixing, as well as the breaking,” Ezekiel said, rubbing at his chin. “And this has manifested twice?”

“When I walked through the fire,” Johnny said, nodding. “And then again in the dungeons, when the Goblin King – when he threatened Peter.”

“I see,” Ezekiel said, his eyes shining in the dark. “Well, then…”

He moved so fast that Johnny barely registered it; he blinked and it was almost like Ezekiel was gone. He’d struck out, his hand wrapped around Peter’s throat as he shoved him back against the wall. Peter grunted at the impact, the sound ringing out in the tiny room. The lantern, balanced precariously as it was, tipped over, and it illuminated Peter and Ezekiel in ghostly light: Peter with his spider eyes glowing just under his skin, and Ezekiel with his hands covered in dark, bristling hair. His nails had turned into talons, pricking at Peter’s throat.

Johnny had no weapons, not even a simple knife, but it didn’t matter. Ezekiel was hurting Peter, and Johnny wasn’t going to allow anyone to ever do that again. He wrested Ezekiel away from Peter with a wild yell, using all of his strength – and he was surprised at how much it took, when Ezekiel appeared to be an old man – to throw him to the ground.

His curiosity had allowed Peter to be hurt once before. Johnny wouldn’t allow it to happen a second time. Ezekiel struck him a stinging blow against one cheek, but it seemed that Johnny was faster. He got one hand around the old man’s throat and raised his other fist. His hand felt hot, almost as hot as the feeling inside his chest, the fire inside him that had ignited as soon as he’d seen Peter in danger.

“Stop!”

Johnny panted hard, his burning fingers held a few trembling inches from Ezekiel’s face. He hadn’t even realized his fingers had burst into flame again until Peter had shouted. The flames lit up Ezekiel’s face, revealing a sly grin.

“Stop, Johnny,” Peter repeated, carefully slipping his hands under Johnny’s arms and pulling him off Ezekiel. “You’re doing it.”

“Oh,” Johnny said, holding his glowing hand up in front of him.

“Gets them every time,” Ezekiel said, sitting up. He gripped his hip with an exaggerated wince. “Oh, my aching back.”

“You’re fine, old man,” Peter said, shooting him a nasty look. He gripped Johnny’s shoulders tightly, glancing back at him. “My love?”

“I’m fine. I’m – I can’t get the flames to turn off,” he said, panic growing. Then, just like that, the fire extinguished itself, leaving Johnny’s hands unsinged and unharmed, smoke curling up in grey plumes from his knuckles. “Oh.”

“Flame off, I suppose,” Peter said, frowning down at Johnny’s hands. His voice sounded rough, reminding Johnny that just a moment ago Ezekiel had held him pinned to the wall.

“Did he hurt you?” Johnny asked.

“No. He baited _you_ ,” Peter said, taking Johnny’s hands in his own. “I’m fine, Johnny.”

“Baited me?” Johnny said, frowning.

Peter nodded. Then he stood, turned to Ezekiel, and struck him across the face with the back of his hand. Ezekiel stumbled but didn’t fall, glowering at Peter as he rubbed at his jaw.

“This is the thanks I get?” he asked.

“For frightening Johnny,” Peter replied, tilting his head to the side. “And for Cindy, always.”

Ezekiel shrugged carelessly. “You never were one to forgive.”

“Did you see what you needed to, old man?” Peter asked. “Can you help Johnny?”

Ezekiel straightened up. He was no longer the half-man, half-spider monster who had pinned Peter to the wall, but he was no longer the harmless looking old man either. His eyes glimmered in the darkness, sharp and filled with hidden knowledge.

“Whether I could was never the question, my king,” he said. He glanced at Johnny, something oddly like approval on his face. “Well, now we know you can summon up your magic when it’s needed most, my young firebird.” His grin held a wicked edge. “The next thing we do is teach you how to control it.”

* * *

Peter accompanied Johnny to his first few lessons with Ezekiel, and he followed both Johnny and Ezekiel’s movements like a hawk.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Peter,” Ezekiel said on the third day, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. “If I wanted to harm either of you, don’t you think I would’ve done it by now?”

“I don’t know, old man,” Peter said, crossing his arms. “Would you?”

“It’s the suspicion that’ll send you to an early grave, you know,” Ezekiel chided him. “Go. Your presence splits his focus. It’s his new talents he should be concentrating on, not your eternal brooding.”

“I don’t _brood_ ,” Peter said. Ezekiel rolled his eyes.

“If you say so, Your Majesty,” he said, condescendingly. Peter’s scowl deepened. “You have your own curse, king of spiders. I suggest you stop worrying about your lover and start worrying about that.”

“I can do both,” Peter snarled. He’d grown increasingly short on patience the last few days, though whether it had to do with the Goblin King’s curse or Johnny’s own condition, Johnny couldn’t say and was hesitant to ask, fearful he wouldn’t like the answer.

“Your hovering is distracting him,” Ezekiel snapped back at him, showing no fear in the face of Peter’s anger. “You brought him to me so I could teach him, correct? Then trust me to teach him, you insolent, know-nothing brat!”

Peter’s shoulders stiffened and for a moment Johnny really thought he might strike Ezekiel. Then he slumped backwards, one hand over his eyes.

“I think I liked you better when you were trying to kill me, you dusty old codger,” Peter said. “I hope you bend the wrong way and snap a hip.”

Ezekiel smirked.

“Good to see cursing hasn’t dampened your spirits,” he said. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Your Majesty.”

Peter still hesitated, glancing sidelong at Johnny. Johnny reached out and touched his shoulder.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll be fine. If he tries to kill me, I’ll set him on fire.”

Peter snorted.

“I won’t be far,” he promised Johnny. “Call if you need me. And if _you_ kill _him_ ,” this part he shot at Ezekiel, his hand on the door, “there’s plenty of places to hide the body.”

Ezekiel waited until Peter’s footsteps on the stairs had faded before he said, “Well, I can see why he likes you.”

“Because I threatened to set you on fire?” Johnny asked. He and Ezekiel settled into the positions that had become customary during these sessions: each seated with their legs crossed and hands outstretched, mirroring each other perfectly.

“Not because you threatened,” Ezekiel said. “Because you meant it. You don’t relish the thought of setting me ablaze, that’s as clear as the nose on your face, but,” he paused, his eyes shrewd. “You would do it if it meant protecting him. You’re brave. More importantly, you’re loyal. He needs that.”

“Peter’s brave and he’s loyal,” Johnny said. He focused, like Ezekiel had taught him, on the very tips of his fingers, letting the warmth in his chest flow through him. He waited to feel a spark, or for something to happen. His hands remained as they were. “He doesn’t need me for that. Ow!”

He jumped as Ezekiel sharply rapped him on the knuckles.

“What was that for?” he asked as he shook out his hands. He nearly went cross-eyed as Ezekiel held up one finger right in front of his face.

“You don’t help your king by denying your gifts,” Ezekiel said. “If you weren’t brave, and if you weren’t loyal, you wouldn’t have traveled all this way to free him from his curse.”

“For all the good it did,” Johnny said, swatting Ezekiel’s hand away from his face. “He’s still cursed. The Goblin King still has his claws in him, and this time there’s nothing I can do about it. I came all this way to help him, and this time I cannot.”

“You shouldn’t sound so certain or you’ll set your own fate in stone,” Ezekiel said. “Peter’s faced a great many challenges in his life. I don’t doubt he’ll face more. Better for him to have you by his side to battle this next one. Now concentrate.”

Johnny closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. The fire came easier since he’d started his lessons with Ezekiel, but it still took effort. He had to reach deep down inside of himself and pull it out, and then he had to keep a tight hold on it.

It was easiest, he found, to do that when he thought about the people he loved, the ones he would do anything to protect. Sue and Reed and Ben. May and Nathan. But it was the thought of Peter most of all made the flames spring into being.

The fire flickered to life at the tips of his fingers, warm like dipping his hand into a hot bath. They spread rapidly, from his fingers up to his wrists, trailing like red-orange vines up to his rolled sleeves. He turned his hands over so that his palms were facing up, staring into the flames.

“They’re beautiful,” he said, very quietly.

“And like most beautiful things, quite dangerous,” Ezekiel said. “But that’s why Peter brought you here. To learn how to control it.”

Johnny wanted to learn how to control it. He wanted to be useful, to Peter, to his kingdom. He wanted to prove his worth.

The flames burned higher.

“Did you really try to kill him?” he asked.

Ezekiel’s smile was a strange thing in the fire light, crooked and a little sad but ultimately unrepentant.

“I did what I thought I had to do, at the time,” he said. “But, as you can see, I didn’t succeed. I don’t hold it against him.”

“How magnanimous of you,” Johnny muttered. Ezekiel chuckled wryly.

“I did always wonder when he would wed,” Ezekiel said. “A long time ago, I thought it would be – well, but you don’t want to hear such old tales, I’m sure.”

“No,” Johnny said, sick at the thought of Peter wedding another – a real honest wedding, and not part of the Goblin King’s gambit. Sometimes, late at night, he tried not to think of either girl who said they were to have him, spiderweb covered Cindy or the Goblin Princess with her cold eyes, but he always failed. “I do want to know. I – I know I’m not the one who was supposed to have him.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Ezekiel said. “Or you could look at it like this: you won his hand by your own merits and by your own efforts, and that it doesn’t matter who was to have him when you have him now.”

“I caused so much trouble for him,” Johnny said, looking away, down at the cold stone floor. A chill seized in his chest as he remembered lighting the candle, holding it out in that dark bedroom, desperate to get a glimpse of his prince’s hidden face. “I wasn’t strong enough. It was because of me that he suffered.”

The fire in his hands sputtered and faded, the high flames retreating as if he could feel the ice in his veins, remembering what he had done.

“I wouldn’t take all the credit for yourself in that regard. He’s stubborn. He always has been,” Ezekiel said. “I’d say it was admirable, if it wasn’t often to the point of bullheadedness. It’s a family trait. His brothers are much the same.”

He winced as soon as he said, like he’d revealed something he hadn’t meant to.

“He has brothers?” Johnny asked, surprised. The flames engulfing his hands leapt higher.

“Concentrate,” Ezekiel said sternly, rapping Johnny across the knuckles as if the flames meant nothing to him. Johnny took a sharp breath and reigned the fire back in.

“I’m sorry,” he said, a little bitterly. “He’s never said anything.”

They had talked, often, about Johnny’s sister, and about how he missed her, and how they’d used to live in that small cabin alone together. If Peter had brothers, then why hadn’t he ever mentioned them? It would have made Johnny feel less alone, to know Peter truly understood how he felt.

“One thing you’ll come to learn about our king,” Ezekiel said, his eyes fixed on the flames, “is that he has many, many secrets. You mustn’t mind it too much. He’s a spider. It’s in his nature to keep things to himself.” He tapped at Johnny’s knuckles again. “It’s all in the web.”

Johnny swallowed down his protests – that it should be different with him, after everything he’d endured to be at Peter’s side. It should be different because they shared a bed. It should be different because Peter claimed he truly loved him.

“He has two brothers,” Ezekiel after a moment, almost as if he felt sympathy for Johnny. “Brave Ben, steady as the dawn, and bitter Kaine, sorrowful as midnight. And that’s where they dwell, the both of them, far, far away from here, banished long ago. He hasn’t seen them in many years. I expect he won’t see them again for many more.”

Johnny swallowed down a hard lump of sadness for Peter.

“You’re a good one,” Ezekiel said, gentler than before. “You feel.”

Johnny looked up, surprised.

“You feel for him especially,” Ezekiel said.

“I love him,” Johnny answered honestly.

“Many have,” Ezekiel said with a shrug. “You’ve met a few already, I reckon.”

Johnny breathed in deeply, trying to quell the sudden spark of jealousy that ignited in his chest. He closed his eyes, but he could still feel Ezekiel’s knowing gaze trained on his face. His hands felt hot. The jealousy felt hotter.

“Are you trying to bait me again, old man?” he asked, adopting a poor imitation of Peter’s mocking tone.

“Not especially,” Ezekiel said. “I don’t think that’s the key, in any case. Yours is too pure a heart for that.”

If he were so pure of heart, Johnny thought, it wouldn’t be in him to be jealous at all, especially not of figures from Peter’s past. If he were so pure of heart, he wouldn’t have doubted so many things. He’d be like the hero in a storybook, full of faith. But he wasn’t.

“No,” said Ezekiel, his hands hovering just beneath Johnny’s. “It was never the baiting and never the anger. Every time you’ve burned, it’s been for him.” He looked up, and for only a second there was something terribly sad in his eyes. “You said it yourself. Because you love him.”

“I do,” Johnny said, letting the warmth of his own flames sink into him. They seemed to burn all the brighter for it. “I love him more than I knew I could love anyone.”

“That’s the key,” Ezekiel said, his eyes lit with a mad gleam in the firelight. “Your fire burns for him.”

That night Johnny laid in bed with Peter, Peter’s head on his chest as Johnny combed his fingers through Peter’s thick hair. Every so often Peter would turn his head and press a kiss to the nearest bit of Johnny’s skin, and it was during one of these kisses that Johnny worked up the nerve to say it.

“You never told me you had brothers.”

Peter went as still as a statue. Slowly he lifted himself up, staring down at Johnny with a frown on his face.

“Ezekiel told you,” he said after a minute. He sighed. “I should have known. I bet he made out like it was a slip of the tongue and everything, sly old bastard.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Johnny asked.

Peter sat up, turning from Johnny. The sheets slipped to pool at his waist as he brought one knee up and rested his arm against it, turning his frown against the far wall.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen either of them,” he said. “A long, long time. I didn’t – you miss your sister so much. I didn’t want to burden you with my sorrows, too.”

Johnny sat up too, gathering up the sheet as he faced Peter – not touching, simply waiting him out.

“Do you miss them?” he asked after a moment.

Peter smiled a funny sort of smile and shrugged his shoulders. “They’re my brothers. We’re three of a kind.” He held up three fingers, then folded them down one by one. “Dawn, day, and deepest night.”

“I don’t understand,” Johnny said. He felt, these days, like he didn’t understand a great many things, but usually Peter had a way of making him see.

Peter extended his hand and Johnny placed his in it. Peter threaded their fingers together, then raised their joined hands to kiss.

“I miss them very much,” he said. “I thought… when I returned, that they’d be here. But the Goblin King quickly relieved me of that fantasy.” He kissed Johnny’s hand again, then collapsed backwards so that he was staring up at the ceiling, one arm behind his head. “He cursed them both. Sent them away. And I have no idea where they might be now.”

“The Goblin King,” Johnny said, lying down on his side next to Peter. “Does he know?”

“Norman?” Peter snorted. “He always has some card left to play. I’m sure he does, but he hasn’t spoken about them. Not yet at least. No, it’s just more little plots to dangle over my head. The whereabouts of my brothers, and how to get rid of this… this…”

He trailed off. They hadn’t talked about the curse much, not since the night in the dungeons. When Johnny tried, Peter shut down, like there was a wall around his heart he’d built to keep all the darkness inside.

But the wall kept Johnny outside, too. Johnny didn’t want that, not anymore. Not with Peter. He reached over and put his hand on Peter’s knee, squeezing.

“Tell me,” he said, looking deep into Peter’s eyes. Peter stared back, and after a minute the walls came down, and Johnny could see the hurt plain on his face. “Peter. It’s only me. Tell me.”

“Kaine used to have visions,” Peter said. “Flashes of possible futures. Nothing that was ever a guarantee but – troubling things. Bad things. They were – painful. They hurt him. And that year, he’d been… difficult. Distant. Ben and I joked that it was those horrid teenage years.” A troubled look passed over his face, his eyebrows drawing together. “He had a vision right before the Goblin King came. He begged me to send Norman away. And I… I didn’t listen.”

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“He’s my brother,” he said. “I should have listened. If I had, maybe then none of this would have come to pass.” He took a deep breath. “But then, if that had happened, I wouldn’t have met you.”

He reached up to touch Johnny’s face, his thumb brushing against the crest of his cheekbone. His eyes were dark and warm and Johnny could have happily drowned in his gaze.

“And I don’t regret meeting you,” he said softly. “I never have, not for one second.”

Johnny moved, swinging one leg over Peter’s hips and planting his arms on either side of his head so he could easily kiss him. Peter’s lips were warm, and he tasted only of himself, with no hint of the oily darkness the Goblin King had cursed him with. They had survived one curse. Johnny knew they would survive this one, too.

“Nor me,” he whispered against Peter’s lips. The lights dimmed of their own accord around them, plunging them into a comfortable gloom. He kissed Peter again. “And I never will.”

* * *

Johnny and Peter were having breakfast in their rooms when a maid interrupted the next morning.

“It’s Lady Allan, my lord,” she told Peter, looking nervous. Her fingers were knotted in her apron strings. “I told her you were indisposed at the moment, but she insisted that she had to see you at once.”

A frown crossed Peter’s face.

“Send her ladyship in,” he said, tossing his napkin on his plate and rising from their small table. Johnny tried to rise as well but Peter gestured for him to remain seated.

The maid slipped back out through the doors and returned a moment later with a regal looking woman in tow. She was dressed in pale pink silk and her hair hung in shining curls. A heavy string of pearls and emeralds adorned her neck. In spite of all her finery, she looked tired and distraught, and her eyes were red rimmed.

“Peter!” she said, throwing herself into his arms.

“Liz,” he said. His arms came up around her immediately, holding her tight against him. He pressed his nose to her hair for a moment and then stepped back, holding her by her arms. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

He guided her into his vacated chair, still holding tight to one of her hands.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, producing a silk handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. “You know I would never if it wasn’t urgent, but it is, and I don’t know what to do.”

Peter’s expression darkened as he looked down at her.

“It’s Harry, isn’t it?” he said. “Something’s wrong with Harry.”

Liz nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks.

Johnny remembered Harry, the Goblin King’s son. He’d only met him a handful of times, but he’d seemed unwell. Peter had hoped, Johnny knew, that with the Goblin King overthrown, Harry might improve, but the days had gone by and he hadn’t. Nightmares plagued him day and night. He’d grown thinner and paler, and he screamed his throat raw when he saw himself in mirrors.

Finally, Peter had sent him away from the castle, out to the country. It was terrible, but Johnny had been relieved to see him go. Ever since he’d first seen him, there had been something about Harry – some brittle edge – that had unnerved him. But it was terrible to think things like that about someone Peter loved. Even if that someone happened to be the person Peter had been cursed in the first place.

“I’m so frightened for him, Peter,” she said. “I didn’t know who else to turn to.”

“It’s all right, Liz,” he said, touching gentle fingers to her chin and tilting her face up towards him. He had his kindest voice on, the one he used with his aunt and small children and Johnny, when nightmares woke him. “You were right to come to me. Tell me everything; I’ll do anything I can to help.”

“He was better,” Liz said, looking up into Peter’s face. “You have to believe me, he was getting better. There was color in his cheeks again and he was _smiling_ and then… and then…”

“Tell me,” Peter said, squeezing her hands. “You know there’s nothing you can’t tell me, especially about Harry.”

“It happened in the middle of the night,” Liz said, glancing down. “He woke up screaming. He thought he was seeing his father.”

Peter’s back went ramrod straight and his shoulders stiffened. The gentleness faded from his face, replaced by a hardness, but only for a moment.

“Where is Harry now, Liz?” he asked.

“In the carriage,” she whispered, fresh tears sliding down her cheeks. “Please, Peter, promise me you’ll help him.”

“I promise I’ll do all I can,” Peter told her.

Harry was brought into one the spare rooms. Johnny wasn’t shocked by his appearance, not exactly – last he’d seen Harry he had looked much the same, too thin and pale with deep shadows beneath his blank eyes. Johnny had never thought of the expression ‘green around the gills’ as something quite so literal until the first time he’d laid eyes on Harry Osborn, but there was something about his sickly complexion, a faint green sheen to his skin.

Peter’s face darkened as soon as he saw him in a way that made Johnny’s chest clench. Harry saw it, too, and he cringed back, his thin hands held up in front of him.

“No, Har,” Peter said immediately, getting down on his knees in front of him. He took his wrists gently in his hands. “Don’t do that. It’s just me. It’s only Peter.”

He reached up and cupped a hand to Harry’s gaunt cheek and slowly, little by little, Harry relaxed.

“Peter,” he said. His voice was full of relief.

“That’s right,” Peter said. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” When Harry shook his head, Peter said, “I got your letters. You sounded happy. Liz said you were happy, too. What’s happened, Harry? Tell me.”

It was an order, not a question.

“Nothing,” Harry rasped. His eyes darted around the room nervously, like he was searching for something. “Nothing has happened.” His tongue darted out to lick at his chapped lips. “It’s very lovely at Lady Allan’s. The roses are all in bloom.”

Liz dissolved into a fresh round of tears.

“All of the roses died,” she told Peter, her words muffled behind one slim hand. “It happened right when he started having the dreams again.”

“Liz,” Harry said, looking at her with wide, wounded eyes.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” she said. “I had to tell him.”

It happened so suddenly that Johnny yelped, his hands coming up, and it was only all of his newfound practice with his fire that kept the flames from erupting from his skin. One second Harry looked like a wounded bird, and the next he was snarling, baring his teeth as he snapped at Liz, straining to get at her. Peter held him back, but Johnny could see that it took effort, even for him with all his strength.

“You promised!” he shouted at Liz, his voice harsh and furious as he fought against Peter’s grip. “You promised, you miserable wretch! You said you wouldn’t tell him! Not him!”

“Harry, please!” Liz cried, reaching out a hand for him. Johnny moved without thinking, putting himself in front of her, between her and Harry, and she sobbed all the harder for it.

“Harry!” Peter said, wrestling him down on the bed. He grabbed Harry by his thin shoulders, shaking him. “Stop it, Harry! This isn’t you. You know this isn’t you. Come back to us.”

Harry’s breathing was loud and ragged, his eyes full of rage and spite as he stared up at Peter. He spit at him and Peter growled, shoving him back down harder. Harry hissed in pain as Peter’s fingers tightened around his shoulders and Johnny frowned, starting forward.

It wasn’t like Peter to hurt someone he cared about. It was only when Johnny got a good look at his face that he realized what was happening.

The curse’s inky darkness had crossed Peter’s eyes, contorting his face with anger. It was gone between one blink and the next, but not quite so fast that Johnny missed it. He wasn’t the only one. Harry suddenly went limp, sprawling out back against the bed. The rage was gone from his face, replaced by something like wonder.

“Harry?” Peter asked after a second. His grip on Harry’s shoulders loosened.

“Oh,” Harry said, staring up into Peter’s face. He raised a trembling hand to touch his cheek, and Peter instantly covered it with his own. “My father has you again, too.”

The color drained from Peter’s face. He let go of Harry’s hand like he’d been burned.

“Harry, do you know something?” he asked. “If you know something, you have to tell me. It’s the only way I can help.”

“No!” Harry said, shaking his head. “I don’t know anything! He didn’t tell me! He’ll hurt you if I tell you, oh Peter, please, don’t make me, don’t make me let him hurt you, I don’t want him to hurt you.”

A loud gasp from the doorway startled all of them, save for Harry, who barely seemed to notice. Johnny turned and found Flash standing there, staring with wide eyes at Peter, Liz, and Harry.

“Harry?” he said. “What happened? Liz?”

Liz burst into a fresh round of tears, throwing herself against Flash’s chest. He wrapped his arms tight around her, holding her as she wept. Johnny felt out of place, standing with the four of them. He could feel the history between them, but he didn’t know it, and it wasn’t his to share in.

“It’ll be alright, Liz, you’ll see,” Flash whispered to her, but Liz only shook her head. Flash looked up, his eyebrows knit together. “Peter? Whatever’s happening – it will be all right, won’t it?”

Peter didn’t answer. His head was hung low as he swept from the room. Flash bit his lip as he watched him go.

“Go after him, please,” he said to Johnny.

Johnny had barely taken a step before Harry’s hand shot out. He grabbed Johnny’s arm just above the elbow, his nails digging into his flesh like claws.

“My father whispers to me at night,” Harry said, his grip inhumanly strong and his eyes impossibly green. “He says when the red moon rises, you’ll get what you deserve.”

Johnny yanked his hand away.

“You touched things you shouldn’t have,” Harry told him, cold and inflectionless, nothing like the begging wreck he’d been for Peter moments before. The worst part of it was, Johnny didn’t know which of the two was the truth. Maybe the answer was neither.

“Go,” Flash told him. He was pale and his eyes were worried, but his voice was firm. “Peter – His Majesty needs you. I’ll watch over them.” He smiled, small and sad, his hand sliding into Liz’s shining curls as he held her against his shoulder. “It’ll be all right.”

Johnny didn’t need to be told thrice. He was eager to leave the room, and to be away from Harry with his cryptic words and sickly green eyes.

When Johnny glanced back, Liz had torn herself away from Flash. She was sitting on the bed with her arms wrapped tightly around Harry. His head lay on her shoulder, but his gaze – still so unnaturally green – was fixed on Johnny.

Johnny tried not to shudder as he turned away, but he failed.

* * *

The curse was taking more and more hold over Peter every day, as if now that the Goblin King had summoned it up there was less and less holding it back. At first, Johnny thought it was him – he was watching for it now, after all, and noting every tense movement, every word not quite in Peter’s voice.

Peter tried to hide it, as though his will alone could force it back to the hell it had come from. It did no good.

Harry, too, was getting worse. Sometimes he ranted and raved, cursing at everyone who came near including Liz, who was driven to tears by his words, and Peter, who visibly fought to control himself. Other times Harry was as silent as a statue, staring off into space, as though he could neither see nor hear anyone. He barely ate, and he cried out in his sleep. His appearance was more frail than ever, as if he might simply fade away before their eyes.

“I can’t believe any father could do this to their child,” Johnny said.

“Norman’s never deserved that title,” Peter said. “He’s a monster, through and through.”

His hands were clenched so tightly that blood dripped to the floor. Johnny unfurled his fingers one by one to inspect the angry crescent shaped wounds left there, then brought Peter’s hands up to kiss them.

“This has to end,” he told him, cradling one hand to his cheek.

“And I’ll end it,” Peter said, hanging his head. “No matter what I have to do.”

Johnny went to see Ezekiel alone that day. Peter had been less insistent on going with him as of late, and Johnny would have liked to think of it as faith – that Peter had trust in his ability to defend himself, that he had confidence in Johnny’s abilities – but he knew that it was the curse sinking its inky tendrils into Peter’s heart, turning him cold.

He hated the curse with every fiber of his being. Hated the way it made him doubt Peter. Hated the way it made Peter turn away from him in the middle of the night.

Ezekiel knew what was bothering him. Those sharp eyes of his missed nothing, not the way Johnny came alone nor the way his frown wouldn’t budge. But he didn’t mention anything, and for that Johnny was grateful. He couldn’t have spoken about it even if he wanted to.

Thoughts of the curse dogged him on his walk back to the castle. It was dark by then, but the gardens were warm and fragrant, and Johnny tried not to mind being alone in them. The castle’s lights twinkled up ahead and like this Johnny could pretend that everything would be right again when he arrived, that Peter wouldn’t be cursed, that he would embrace Johnny and that there would be nothing lurking behind his kiss.

The castle was quiet inside. Johnny didn’t know what he had expected – screaming, bloodshed, the place dissolved into chaos in the handful of hours that he had been gone. But everything seemed peaceful.

He would have felt better, he thought, if Peter had been waiting for him, standing in the garden with warm eyes and open arms. Johnny told himself not to be silly or bitter. Even without a curse hanging over his head, he thought, surely Peter would have better things to do than to wait around for Johnny.

He’d been with Ezekiel longer than he planned. Dinner was over. Johnny wondered if anyone had missed him. He wondered, a little bitterly, if anyone had even noticed his absence. The castle had settled into a sleepy sort of quiet by this hour. Normally it felt cozy, but tonight, in the long silent halls, it only served to make Johnny feel alone.

Johnny stopped in his tracks. There were many windows in the hall, and all of them larger than Johnny was tall. On most nights the moonlight spilled crystal clear into the castle, casting everything in an ethereal glow. Tonight, though – tonight long red shadows slanted across the floor.

Johnny raised his eyes to the window. The moon outside was full and bright and red as blood, hanging low and foreboding in the sky. A shiver ran down Johnny’s spine.

_He says when the red moon rises, you’ll get what you deserve._

A bloodcurdling scream filled the air. The sound froze Johnny through and through, chilling him down to the bones, for a precious second before he snapped back to himself.

It had come from Harry’s room. Johnny took off running.

The heavy wooden door was open, and five long scratches marred the inside of it, like something had raked long claws against it before throwing it open. Inside, Liz was crumpled on the floor, the skirts of her gown spread out around her in a puddle of pale green silk. The room was empty except for her – Harry was nowhere to be seen.

Johnny got to his knees next to her, fumbling for her hand.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head from side to side but her sobs were helpless and the sleeve of her gown was torn. Johnny’s heart went out to her; he had seen her with Harry these past few days, and it was plain to see how much she loved him, and how much it hurt her to see him so tormented.

Footsteps made Johnny look up as Peter appeared in the doorway. One thing Johnny had had to get used to now that he could see Peter in the light was how he moved – just a little too fast, a little too fluid, like he was always one step ahead of everyone else. Johnny had watched him fence with Flash a few times, marveling at the easy confidence with which he moved. The curse made something about Peter too wild, though – too fast, too strong. There was something unnerving about him as he stood in the doorway, taking in the scene with shocked eyes.

“Peter,” Johnny said softly.

Peter’s gaze snapped to his face. Something in his expression softened, and suddenly he looked more like himself again.

“Johnny, what happened here?” he asked.

Johnny shook his head, gesturing to Liz.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I heard screaming and I found her here – alone.”

Peter’s jaw tightened. He got down on the floor next to him, one of his hands sliding up Johnny’s back as he tucked the other beneath Liz’s chin.

“Liz, what happened?” Peter asked softly. “Are you all right? Where’s Harry?” He hesitated, and Johnny could hear in his voice how much he hated to even ask it as he said, “Has he hurt you?”

“No!” Liz said, her eyes wide. “No, Harry would never – oh, please, Peter, you have to believe me, he would never. It isn’t his fault. It’s his father.” She glanced down, tears spilling down her cheeks and rage trembling in her voice as she said, “It’s _always_ Norman.”

“It’s all right, Liz. I believe you,” Peter said. He took her by the shoulders. “Tell me what happened.”

Liz told him, her voice gaining strength as she explained what a good day Harry had had, how after they’d eaten dinner together he’d asked her to read to him from one of her favorite books, how he had seemed like his old self again – sweet, shy, unassuming. Then how the moon had risen blood red and the candles in their room had all flickered and how Harry had said that he could hear his father, calling for him.

“I tried to stop him,” Liz told Peter. “It was like he couldn’t hear me. Like he wasn’t himself. He pushed me aside and threw open the door – I’ve never seen him with that kind of strength. Oh, please, Peter, whatever he’s done, it isn’t his fault!”

“Which way did he go?” was all Peter asked.

Liz lifted one slim finger and pointed down the hall that led to the dungeons.

“That way,” she whispered. “Please, Peter, bring him back to me. We need him.”

She brought her hand to her stomach, her face pale in the moonlight. Johnny hand rose to his mouth as Peter’s eyes widened in realization.

“Please,” she said.

“I’ll bring him back to you,” Peter said. He cupped his hand to the back of Liz’s head, threading his fingers through her curls as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “If I have to drag him out of hell myself.”

Then he climbed to his feet and left the room. Johnny was torn for a minute, wondering if it was wise to leave Liz alone, but surely guards would arrive soon, and besides, there was a certainty deep in his chest that Peter needed him.

“Go after him,” Liz told him, as if she knew. She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. “Don’t let him do anything foolish.”

That was easier said than done, Johnny thought as he took off after Peter. Peter’s strides were long and determined, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Just looking at him filled Johnny with a feeling like something horrible was about to happen.

“Peter?” Johnny said, hoping that he would slow down or look at him. Peter did neither. “Are you – are you going after Harry?”

The thought made something sour twist in Johnny’s stomach. Peter loved Harry like a brother, but now he looked so angry. Johnny couldn’t have harmed Peter for the world, he knew that much – what he didn’t know was if he was strong enough to stop Peter, cursed as he was, from doing something he’d regret.

“No,” Peter said. “I have to make sure May’s safe. That’s my first priority. Then I’ll go after Harry.”

May’s rooms were one of Johnny’s favorite places in the castle. Everything in them seemed made for comfort. The fireplace was always warm and the couches were soft, everything decorated in shades of pink and peach, mauve and soft blues. The air always smelled like lavender and rose. It seemed wrong to barge in bearing ill news.

Something in May’s face as she ushered them inside told him she already knew.

“Something’s happening, dear, isn’t it?” May asked. Her eyes were troubled. “There’s a bad moon out and I’ve seen that look on your face before.”

Peter took her by the shoulders as he said, “I don’t want you to worry, May. It’ll all be all right, I promise you that. But I…”

“It’s all right, my darling,” May said softly. “You can say whatever it is you need to say.”

“I want you to stay here, where you’re safe,” Peter said. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”

“Peter, dear,” May said, touching his cheek. Peter cupped his hand to hers with infinite tenderness. “This isn’t what I wanted for you, all this suffering and fighting. I’d give anything for you to be free of it.”

“Don’t worry, May,” Peter said softly. “It won’t be like last time. I won’t let it.”

“Oh, my darling boy,” May said softly. “Don’t you know I’d have rather been cursed with you than blessed anywhere else?”

Johnny knew the feeling.

Peter’s eyes fell closed. He bent down to press his lips against her forehead for a long, lingering moment, and then he straightened up.

“Don’t let anyone in,” he said, taking May by the shoulders. “Not until it’s over. Not even -- if it looks like me.”

“Don’t you worry, Peter my boy,” Nathan said from his customary spot by the fire place. He lifted the heavy iron poker and brandished it like a sword. “If it comes down it I’ll fight the devil off myself.”

Peter smiled faintly, but when he said, “You do that, Nathan,” he didn’t say it like a joke, and the worry never faded from Mays’s face.

“Stay safe, my dearest,” she said.

“You know me, May,” Peter said with a tired smile. “I’ve always been the very picture of caution.”

The door closed between them and Peter put his hand to it for a long moment, his eyes closed. Then he drew himself up to his full height and stepped back. Johnny waited for him to say something, to name their plan of attack. What they were going to do next and how they would defeat the Goblin King. Surely, he thought, Peter would already have some brilliant scheme up his sleeve, some way for them to win.

But instead Peter dragged him down the hall, towards their rooms. He unceremoniously pushed Johnny inside, then slammed him back against the door with none of his usual gentleness. Their lips met, and the kiss was a fierce, desperate thing that made Johnny ache in more ways than one.

“Peter,” he gasped when they broke apart, trying to catch Peter’s face between his hands. “Peter, what is it? What are you doing?”

Peter’s face was grim.

“I need you to do something for me,” he said.

“Of course,” Johnny said.

Peter brought his hand up, gently touching his knuckles to the line of Johnny’s jaw.

“I want you to stay here,” he said. “And no matter what happens tonight, I want you to keep the doors locked until the morning’s first light.”

Johnny’s stomach plummeted.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, catching Peter’s hand in his own. “You can’t mean for me to leave you now!”

“I’ve never meant anything more,” Peter said. “I don’t know what tonight will bring, but I know that I can face it so long as I know that you’re safe. Johnny, please. Please do this for me.”

Slowly, painfully, Johnny nodded. He swallowed hard, his throat tight and aching, even as Peter smiled.

“Lock the doors and bar the windows,” Peter said, pressing a fierce kiss to Johnny’s forehead. “There will be guards posted at the doors. Nothing will harm you in my castle, my love. Nothing in the world.” A shadow flickered over his face. Something stirred deep in his eyes. “Not even me.”

“You wouldn’t,” Johnny said, catching Peter’s face between his hands. “You couldn’t.”

“I couldn’t,” Peter said.

He lowered his forehead to Johnny’s shoulders and wrapped his arms around him, holding onto fistfuls of Johnny’s shirt. He breathed in deeply and then he let go.

“I couldn’t,” he repeated, taking a step back. Johnny ached with every inch of distance between them. “But the Goblin King could. I don’t know what this curse inside me will make me do, Johnny, but I know I cannot allow it to harm you.” He smiled, soft and sad. “Never you, not again. I won’t allow it.”

“I don’t want to be apart from you. Especially not tonight,” Johnny said, swallowing hard. His throat felt tight and his eyes stung. That little voice inside him that told him he wasn’t good enough for Peter, wasn’t strong or smart enough, had started to whisper again. “You think I’ll be a burden, don’t you?”

“You could never be a burden to me,” Peter said, reaching out to brush his fingers along Johnny’s cheek. “And I would do anything to keep you safe. Please, Johnny – promise this thing, this one thing, and I’ll never ask you for anything again.”

 _That’s what I’m afraid of,_ Johnny thought.

“This will all be over soon,” Peter said, his voice quiet and grave. “And then I’ll come back for you, as you did for me. You’ll see.”

He stepped forward and kissed Johnny one last time. Johnny wanted to beg him not to go, to stay in this room with him and wait for morning, when surely everything would be better. He wanted to tangle his hands in Peter’s thick dark hair and plead with him, to cry and show Peter what he was doing him. But he only kissed him back, making the moment last as long as he could.

It was worse than stepping through the fire, when Peter pulled away. Johnny had lost him once already, and so he knew what it felt like.

“I will be back,” Peter promised, his forehead pressed to Johnny’s.

Then he slipped through the heavy wood doors and was gone. Johnny felt like his heart had been torn out of his chest.

Johnny did as Peter had asked; he locked the doors, and then the windows, and then he was all alone. The room seemed larger, somehow, without Peter in it, as if his very presence changed the dimensions. He should sit down, he told himself. He should find something for himself to do. He shouldn’t stand here, silently, simply waiting for Peter to return to him as if he were a princess in a storybook imprisoned in a tower, just waiting for a rescue to come. He’d loved those stories when he’d been small, tracing the images in picture books by the dying light of a fire. How badly he’d wanted one of those fairy tale heroes to come and rescue him.

On those long lonely days when Peter could only come to him at night, he’d still thought of it like a rescue. The cursed prince, come to pluck him out of his cold, dreary village and whisk him away. And Peter had loved him, even after Johnny had lit the candle and betrayed him. Somehow, in spite of everything, Peter loved him still.

Johnny had told himself he’d never break a promise to Peter again, but some promises were meant to be broken.

The shirt Johnny was wearing was made of silk, as cool and blue as a summer’s sky and decorated with fine golden embroidery. It was pretty and impractical, just like him, and absolutely not made for a fight. He took instead from the wardrobe one of Peter’s shirts, simple and plain and smelling of him, for strength. Then he inspected the swords. Johnny had never used a sword before, but he’d watched Peter with the knights and thought he knew the basics, and he knew well enough how to wield a kitchen knife. Even if it wasn’t exactly the same, it was better than staying put in their bedroom, waiting to be attacked.

Johnny buckled the sword belt and threw open the doors.

* * *

It took little time at all to find Peter. Johnny knew the twists and turns of the castle well by now, but he knew Peter better, how he moved when he was being cautious, quiet and careful and sticking to the shadows.

Johnny knew the route he would take, and so he cut across his path. He had perhaps been a little too fast, rounding a corner just as Peter appeared. Surprise flashed across Peter’s eyes at the motion and then, recognizing who it was that stood before him, he swore and dropped his hand from the hilt of his sword.

“Are you mad?” he demanded of Johnny, his voice little more than a furious hiss.

“I think I must be,” Johnny said as Peter pulled him in the darkness of a shadowy corner, his hands rough at Johnny’s shoulders.

“What are you doing here?” Peter demanded, shaking Johnny a little. “This is not what I asked of you!”

“I know,” Johnny told him. “But I couldn’t stand it, so I came to find you. To fight with you.”

“Of all the stupid, harebrained, empty-headed --!” Peter said, practically spitting with rage.

“You can insult me or you can send me away again!” Johnny said, sticking his finger in Peter’s chest. “But you can’t do both. It isn’t fair, Peter.” He swallowed hard, lowered his voice. “And you can’t send me away again. I won’t allow it.”

“You won’t allow it?” Peter parroted back. “Are you my lord and master now?”

Johnny drew himself up to his full height and lifted his chin. “Am I not the one most suited to be?”

“I – you --!” Peter said, and then he turned away and sighed. “You’re my real curse, you know. Sent here to drive me absolutely mad.”

“If that’s what it takes to get you to listen to me, then I accept it!” Johnny said. “I won’t let you go alone, Peter. Not like you are now. Not against him.”

Peter exhaled slowly, his hands balled into fists at his side. Slowly, Johnny reached out and touched his arm.

“There’s no getting rid of me now, Peter,” he said softly. “So please don’t try. I won’t leave you, no matter what you do.” He swallowed, his throat tight, and added, “I want to protect you.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Peter said, turning back to him. “I think of what you went through – what I put you through – to get here, to get to me. You walked through fire for me, Johnny. It makes me hate myself, that I did this to you. How can I ask you to do anything more?”

Johnny opened his mouth and for a second no words came out, so surprised was he by what Peter had said. By the idea that Peter had put Johnny through anything, that it hadn’t been Johnny’s own fault, that Johnny hadn’t been terrified the entire time that he’d lost the best thing he’d ever had. That he’d doomed Peter through his own foolishness. He’d never thought that Peter might be blaming himself for Johnny’s mistakes. His eyes felt damp, but he knew that this was no time for crying.

“You’ve never done anything bad to me, Peter,” he said, reaching down to tangle his fingers with Peter’s. “I promise you that you haven’t. None of this is your fault.”

“Isn’t it?” Peter said with a resigned sigh. “You don’t – there are things I’ve done that you don’t know about, Johnny. Things I could have stopped and didn’t. People I love have suffered from my mistakes time and time again. All I wanted was to spare you that.”

“And all I want is to spare you being hurt more,” Johnny said, squeezing his hand. “So we’ll go together. Say it.”

“So we’ll go together,” Peter repeated, closing his eyes. His smile was a humorless thing, but his hand gripped Johnny’s back tight. “There’s no getting rid of you, is there, my love?”

“If I went east of the sun and west of the moon to a land I’d never find in a million years,” Johnny repeated from memory, “then what chance do you think you have of ever sending me away?”

Peter laughed, soft and a little sad.

“You’ll stay behind me,” he said, rubbing his thumb over Johnny’s knuckles. “And if I say you run – then Johnny, you run.”

“Peter –” Johnny protested, frowning.

“ _Johnny_ ,” Peter cut him off, squeezing his hand and giving him a warning look.

“All right,” Johnny said. He didn’t mean it – there was nothing now that could have convinced him to leave Peter, not even Peter himself – but he thought that Peter probably knew that anyway.

“All right,” Peter agreed back, nodding. He exhaled slowly, putting the hand not holding Johnny’s on the hilt of his sword. “You’ll stay behind me and for God’s sake, for once in your life, you’ll be careful.”

Johnny thought he was one to talk, but now didn’t seem to be the time to tell him that.

The dungeon was looming at the end of the hall when they turned the corner. The doors lay open, the entrance like a great yawning chasm with nothing but darkness beyond it. The guards lay dead on the floor. Their throats had been slashed open, and the edges of the wounds were ragged, as if they’d been torn out by claws. Johnny’s heart sank. He let go of Peter hand and barely heard his sharp admonition as he sprinted towards them. Peter followed quick on his heels.

Flash was among them. There was a deep red stain soaking through the fabric of one sleeve, but when Johnny knelt down beside him he found him still breathing. He sighed with relief.

“He’s alive,” he said to Peter, who had gone still as a statue as soon as he’d seen the carnage.

“Thank the gods,” Peter said, breathing out.

“Flash,” Johnny said, touching his cheek. It was still blessedly warm. “Flash, can you hear me?”

Flash groaned, his eyes fluttering open. He clutched at his arm as he pulled himself up into a sitting position.

“What happened?” Peter asked, getting down on one knee beside him. His eyes were sharp and cold as knives. “Was it Harry?”

“Harry?” Flash said, his brows knit together. “No, it wasn’t – it _couldn’t_ have been Harry. ” When Peter only looked away, Flash said, “Peter? Tell me it couldn’t have been Harry.”

“You were the one here, Flash,” Peter said bitterly. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Because I don’t know! I didn’t see who attacked me,” Flash said. “I heard screaming coming from this direction, so I ran here, and I saw…” he broke off, swallowing hard. “I saw the guards were dead, and there was this _shape_ in the dark. I guess it must have attacked me because the next thing I knew you were here.” He frowned wretchedly and added, “Some knight I am.”

“You’re still a good knight,” Johnny said, slipping a hand under his uninjured arm. “Here, let me help. Can you stand?”

“I’ll manage,” Flash grit out. He looked at Peter, his gaze steady and his brows furrowed. “It couldn’t have been Harry. You know that too, or you wouldn’t be asking.”

“I don’t know what I know anymore,” Peter said wearily. He knelt down by the dead guards, gazing at them, their bloody throats and still bodies. He placed his hand on an armored chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

His hand spasmed, inky darkness covering his hand like twisting vines. Peter dragged in a harsh breath and the darkness retreated, but slowly, clinging to Peter’s skin. Johnny could tell that it didn’t want to go. The curse fed on anger, and Peter was a banquet fit for a king.

“They’ll be avenged,” Flash said quietly.

“Yes,” Peter said, rising to his feet. “And I’ll be the one doing the avenging.”

Flash frowned faintly at that, and Johnny wondered if he could see it – the slight change in Peter’s demeanor, in the way he stood. If he’d noticed the darkness that flitted quicksilver fast behind his eyes now or the way his voice sometimes sounded different. He wondered if Flash was worried about Peter, too.

“Your Majesty,” Flash said softly, redirecting Peter’s attention. He raised a hand and pointed towards the dungeon. “Look at the doors.”

Johnny did, and his heart plummeted. The doors were marred by long scratches. He had seen their like before.

“What could have done that?” Flash wondered.

“That looks like Harry’s door…” Johnny murmured before he could stop himself. When Peter looked at him, his eyebrows furrowed, Johnny guiltily elaborated. “They were scratched just like that.”

Peter cursed softly. His hand tightened almost imperceptibly at his sword.

“But why would Harry scratch the dungeon doors on the inside?” Flash asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Since when has anything Harry’s ever done made sense?” Peter muttered darkly. Flash shot him a vaguely disappointed look before quickly schooling his face back into knightly neutrality. “No, it’s not important why – he’s clearly going after his father.” He looked up, straight at Flash. “I’m going after him”

“Absolutely not!” Flash said. He put a hand to his chest. “I’m your best knight! It’s my job to go.”

“You are my best knight,” Peter replied. “My best friend, too. And you’re injured. I won’t risk you. No, Flash. This fight isn’t for you, not this time.”

“You can’t ask me to leave you now,” Flash said. There was a wounded look in his eyes that Johnny knew well. He had glanced it in the mirror enough times to recognize the feeling like he wasn’t being trusted to pull his own weight.

“It isn’t like that,” Peter said, gripping Flash’s uninjured shoulder. “You _are_ my best knight. You know that. I can’t – I can’t do what I have to do tonight, worrying about May and Liz and all the rest. That’s where I need you. Protecting them.”

Flash swallowed hard and then nodded silently.

“Good man,” Peter told him. “I’m trusting you with this, Flash. You know their safety means more to me than my own life.”

Flash brought his clenched fist up over his heart as he ducked his head in a bow.

“Your Majesty,” he murmured. “I won’t let you down.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Peter’s face as Flash straightened up. “You never have.”

Flash nodded. With one last look at the dungeon and the darkness that lay beyond it, he took a step back. Johnny could see what it cost him.

“Peter,” Flash called, right before he turned the corner. There was a look of trepidation on his face. “Stay safe, alright? We all need you, more than you know.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Peter’s face. It faded almost as soon as it had come, wiped away as Flash disappeared from sight.

“This is my castle,” Peter said. To himself or to the darkness lurking down below, Johnny couldn’t tell. “My kingdom. I won’t let him take it from me again.” He looked down, his inhale sharp. “I won’t let him take _me_ from me again.”

Johnny gripped Peter’s hand tight. The warmth of his own skin seemed to chase the darkness away, and that made Johnny’s throat tight. He wouldn’t let go of Peter, not for anything. The monsters would have to kill him first.

“I won’t let that happen,” he said. “I swear to you.”

Peter turned to look at him, something unreadable in his dark brown eyes, before he looked towards the open dungeon doors.

“He’s down there,” he said. “It’s not too late to turn back. You should let me go alone.”

“Never,” Johnny said.

Peter’s smile was small and strained, but it was real, and it was all him. In that moment there was no darkness behind it. He turned his hand over in Johnny’s and squeezed his fingers tight.

“Last chance, my love,” he said. “There’s no reason to be as foolish as I am.”

“It’s a little too late for that,” Johnny said, squeezing his hand right back. “Where you go, I follow. I think I’ve proved that, haven’t I?”

Peter’s smile softened. “Then we go together.”

The dungeons felt even colder than they had the time before. The torches still burned where they were set into the walls, but the fire flickered ghastly green, the light barely enough for Johnny to see two steps ahead of himself. His breath came in white fog, curling up into ghastly shapes – bat’s wings and little goblins with grasping claws.

“Norman!” Peter called into the gloom, his powerful voice echoing along the stone walls like a mocking cackle. _Norman, Norman, Norman._ “What have you done? Answer me!”

The Goblin King didn’t reply. There was a strange noise coming from the cells down below, like an animal keening, or perhaps a child crying. It made the hairs on the back of Johnny’s arms stand up.

“Peter,” he said softly.

“I know,” Peter replied, lowering his voice to match Johnny’s. “I hear it too.”

Johnny’s flames came unbidden as they reached the bottom of the stairs. They curled around his fists and licked up his arms, bright and vibrant red-orange. Johnny was glad for them and their warmth, but most importantly for their light. He held one hand out in front of him, his flames illuminating the dungeons.

The heavy iron bars of Norman’s cell had been ripped apart from the inside out. A lone figure was crouched in the corner, hidden in the gloom. Johnny held one flaming hand in front of him, illuminating the space. The light from his flames revealed the figure to be Harry. He was curled in on himself, his knees up to his chest and his forehead down against him, his arms wrapped protectively around himself. Johnny thought that he was crying.

“Oh, Harry,” Peter breathed, taking a step forward. Just like that, all the harshness was gone from his voice. “What did you do?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Harry said, rocking back and forth. His hands covered his face, hiding it from view. “I couldn’t help it. He made me do it.”

“What did he make you do, Harry?” Peter said. When Harry only kept rocking, Peter got down on knee in front of him. “Harry, you will look at me.”

Slowly, Harry removed his hands from his face. There were long, red scratches across his cheeks, bleeding sluggishly. Johnny cupped a hand to his mouth as he realized it was Harry’s father who had put them there.

“I didn’t want to let him go, but he made me,” Harry said in a hushed whisper, staring up into Peter’s face. “I’m sorry, Peter.”

Peter cupped the back of Harry’s head with one hand, pressing a fierce kiss to his forehead.

“It’s all right, Harry,” he said, straightening up. “I’m going to end it tonight, once and for all. Come morning there will be no more Goblin King and we will all be free.”

There was a stormy look on his face, more defiant than Johnny had ever seen him, but that wasn’t what scared him. The inky darkness of the Goblin King’s second curse had crept back into Peter’s eyes. His hands clenched and unclenched like he couldn’t wait to wrap them around someone’s throat.

“I’m sorry,” Harry repeated, his voice scarcely a whisper.

“Where did he go?” Peter asked.

Harry raised one trembling hand and pointed at the stairs.

“Up there,” he rasped. “He said he was going to kill them all to make you pay.”

Peter hauled more than helped Harry to his feet, slinging an arm around Harry’s waist and Harry’s arm over his shoulders when he wavered. Johnny took his other side, suddenly all too aware of how thin Harry was compared to either of them, how little he seemed to weigh.

“You should leave me,” Harry told Peter as Peter bodily hauled him up the stone steps.

“I haven’t yet, and I never will,” Peter said through gritted teeth. “Besides, Liz would never forgive me.”

“It’s all my fault,” Harry moaned. His voice was high and despairing, and not for the first time since they’d found him Johnny wondered if he really knew what was going on. “I told Liz not to bring me back here. Or – I wanted to tell Liz not to bring me back here. I’m sorry, Peter.”

“No more apologies, Harry,” Peter said wearily. “It isn’t your fault and they aren’t what I want from you.”

The soft glow of the hall filtered down the steps in front of them. It was not very far now, only a few more steps. All they had to do, Johnny thought, was get back upstairs, out of the dungeon. Then somehow everything would be alright. Somehow Peter would know what to do.

“Well, well,” a familiar voice said. “The king, his firebird, and my dearest son, all in a row. How glad I am to see all three of you together like this.”

The clouds outside parted, and the scarlet moonlight bathed the room in eerie shades of red. The dead knights’ blood shone blue-black on the floor like inky mirrors. And in the middle of the carnage stood the Goblin King, although Johnny didn’t recognize him at first.

Norman was coated from head to toe in red. His long claws dripped with it. At first, Johnny thought it was blood, but then he realized that blood didn’t move like that. The red undulated like snakes or eels, and Norman’s features looked strange through it, twisted and contorted. He seemed somehow taller and thinner than he had before, almost skeletal beneath his red coating. His teeth flashed like knives.

The only thing about him that wasn’t covered in red were his eyes. They still glowed green, as full of malice and spite as ever. How Johnny hated that face, those eyes, for all the suffering their owner had inflicted upon him, yes, but more importantly upon Peter.

“You see,” Norman continued, “I went looking for _you_ , Peter my boy. I was hoping to find you in your rooms, locked in a lover’s embrace, but alas.” A long red tongue darted out to lick at those sharp teeth. “I’ll have to make do with the fact that you came hunting for me.”

“Father?” Harry said, his voice tremulous.

Norman threw his head back and laughed.

“Norman, what did you do?” Peter demanded sharply, pushing both Johnny and Harry a step back.

“Did you think I would willingly let you have the upper hand, Your Majesty?” Norman asked, raising one hand as if to admire his claws. “That I would dig into the darkness only to curse you, and not to better myself?”

“You stupid bastard,” Peter said. “What did you do to yourself?”

“It called to me in the dark while I was working my magic on you,” Norman said. “It’s like yours, but stronger. A real killer. It’s going to make me king all of the kingdoms in all the worlds and it doesn’t care who I have to do away with to get there.”

“Harry,” Peter said. He spoke without taking his eyes off of Norman, his voice low and even. “I want you to run now.”

“He won’t – he wouldn’t hurt me,” Harry said in a small voice. It was clear to all that he didn’t believe it, and Johnny didn’t know how he could even voice it with those scratches on his face.

“Harry!” Peter barked.

Harry ran, scrambling out of the dungeons and almost tripping over the landing steps. Norman laughed as he went, but did little more than watch him, as if Harry was no more than a gnat buzzing through the room. Bothersome but of little consequence.

“Always protecting him, aren’t you?” Norman said to Peter. “I don’t see why you should bother, when even his own father thinks he’s worthless. It’s that kind of sentimentality that will get you killed, my boy.”

“If I go down tonight, Norman, I won’t go down alone,” Peter snarled. He kept his arm extended, keeping Johnny a step back. In spite of everything else, he was still trying to protect him. Fear hammered in Johnny’s chest and he wanted to reach out, to touch Peter for reassurance, but he felt rooted to the spot.

“Always so confident. I’ve enjoyed that about you, Peter,” Norman said. He raised a hand up high. “My Venom. Arise.”

It wasn’t like when the beast had overtaken Peter’s body before. There was no sense of unity this time. Rather the blackness seeped up from Peter’s skin, through his mouth, his nose, his eyes, a waterfall of slick inky darkness that surged upwards and then upon Peter, as if it was trying to consume him from the outside as well as within.

Peter struggled in vain. He was overcome by it in an instant, as if he’d never stood a chance.

“Peter!” Johnny cried. He reached out to touch him – to help him somehow – and his hands sunk into the curse’s darkness as if it was made of oil, slick and wrong. Tendrils wrapped around his wrists, as if the beast knew he was trying to free Peter from its grasp, and it thrust him backwards, sending him skidding to the floor by the Goblin King’s feet.

“Oh, you poor sad thing,” Norman said to Johnny, staring down at him with malicious glee. “You came so far, just to watch your one true love die after all. I wonder what I’ll do to you afterwards.”

Peter growled, struggling harder against the black tendrils. He tore viciously at the beast, ripped inky tendrils away from his face, from his throat, but even Johnny could see it was a losing match.

“Any suggestions?” Norman said to Peter. “If you have good ones then perhaps I’ll let you live long enough to watch.”

He reached down to curl his long fingers around Johnny’s chin, forcing his head up so that he had to look into those evil eyes. Norman’s fingers felt cold, the red covering them squirming like eels where it touched Johnny’s skin. His claws were too sharp. Johnny had never hated a touch more.

That inhumanly long tongue darted out to taste Johnny’s cheek and Johnny’s skin crawled at the touch. Peter let out a cry of rage, amplified a thousand times by the creature’s droning voice.

“Don’t you touch him!” Peter ordered. The black ooze parted just enough for his face to be visible beneath – his teeth bared, his eyes full of rage.

Norman laughed as he released Johnny with a vicious backhand.

“I’ll let you have your privacy,” he said, grinning with his mouth full of needle sharp teeth. “A last moment for the doomed lovers.”

The Goblin King took a step back, and then another, and then another, until he was across the room. He rocked back on his haunches, a mockery of a man taking a throne, and watched them with cold burning eyes.

“Johnny. Quietly now. He mustn’t overhear,” Peter said, his voice low and full of intent. It sounded like it was a struggle for him to get the words out. “The monster. It’s afraid of fire.”

It took Johnny a moment to grasp his meaning, but once he did horror flooded his veins, as cold as ice.

“No,” he said, shaking his head desperately. “No, I won’t do it.”

“Johnny,” Peter repeated. His voice was as steady and as sure as stone, belied only by the slight tremor of hands. “We have to do this. We have to get it out of me.”

“We’ll find another way!” Johnny said. “I won’t hurt you! I can’t. Don’t ask me to do this, Peter. Anything but this.”

“What choice do we have?” Peter said. He brought a hand up, raking his fingers through the inky darkness coating his chest, but the blackness wouldn’t budge. “There is no other way, Johnny. You have to do this or we’ll all be doomed.”

“You said you would never hurt me. Well, I won’t hurt you,” Johnny said desperately. “It’s the same for me, do you understand? I can’t hurt you, Peter. Never you.” He shook his head desperately. “Not again.”

Peter, his eyes clouded black by the Goblin King’s parasite, reached up and took his hands by the wrists.

“You won’t. I trust you, Johnny Storm. I trust you to the ends of this or any other earth.” Peter grit his teeth. “But I’m fading now. It’s growing stronger. You must do it.”

“I love you,” Johnny told him.

He took a deep breath and plunged his blazing hands into the black liquid coating Peter’s chest.

The creature shrieked, high and unearthly like the wail of a ghost, and writhed desperately. Black tendrils reached out as if to pry Johnny’s arms away, but they reared back from the flames. Peter didn’t scream – he grit his teeth and shut his eyes, but seemed untouched by the fire, as if the force inside Johnny knew that Peter was not to be harmed.

The creature wasn’t so lucky. It twisted and screamed, thrashing in the flames, and abruptly Norman stopped laughing.

“What’s this?” he asked, climbing to his feet and narrowing his eyes. “What are you doing, boy?”

He began crossing the room towards them. Johnny grit his teeth and forced the fire higher and hotter, all the while doing everything in his power to keep it from harming Peter. It was like he could see it in his mind’s eye – where the monster ended and where Peter began, and exactly how far he could force the fire. He knew that he could do it, if only he could concentrate – but it was so hard, and the Goblin King was coming closer and closer.

“What are you doing?” Norman demanded, louder.

 _Hotter_ , Johnny thought desperately, throwing his hands up, his fingers spread wide. _Faster._

The creature screamed louder.

“Stop!” commanded Norman.

Johnny didn’t listen to either of them.

The creature let out a withered croak of a noise and, like dried paint peeling from a wall, finally pulled itself away from Peter. Johnny had meant to keep burning it, but it leapt away from the flames, sliding like oil across the floor.

 _Good,_ Johnny thought viciously at it. _Go run and hide, as long as you leave him alone._

Peter fell to his knees gasping – but he was alive, and he appeared to be unhurt, and Johnny could have cried from relief.

The creature seemed to hesitate a moment, and then it crawled towards Norman. Fear seized at Johnny as it slid to his feet, and then crept up his leg, the inky black mingling with the blood red that coated the Goblin King’s body until they were one. Norman barely seemed to notice. The creature was gone, joined with Norman – and now Johnny was exhausted. The fire burning inside him had been reduced to mere embers. He didn’t know if he had anything left to give. He sagged to the floor, feeling empty down to his bones.

If the fire had taken a toll on Peter, he didn’t let it show. He rose up, his sword in hand and smoke curling up from the shoulders of his singed shirt. His eyes were fiercer than Johnny had ever seen before, and entirely clear. There was no inky darkness lurking behind them; the curse was gone.

“What’s the matter, Norman?” Peter challenged. “Why aren’t you laughing anymore? Don’t you think this is funny?”

“I’m becoming very tired of your lover’s little tricks,” the Goblin King hissed.

“I think I rather like them, myself,” Peter replied.

“Perhaps I misjudged you, my boy,” Norman crooned. “Take the creature back and you can rule by my side. You can finally be all that you were meant to be – right after you kill your darling firebird.”

“Never,” Peter snarled.

“That’s always been your problem,” Norman cackled, high and menacing. His voice didn’t sound like his own anymore. “You’ve always been afraid of power, but I – I’ve embraced it.”

He reached out, his arm a red slash against the darkness of the hall, and brought it down with full force against Peter. The blow knocked Peter head to the side and Johnny gasped, as equally startled as he was frightened, for he had never thought someone could strike Peter, proud strong Peter, like that. There was a moment of ringing silence, and then Peter raised his head to look at the Goblin King again.

“That’s not real power, Norman,” Peter said. He spat out a bloody mouthful and then bared his teeth. “You’re just too stupid to know the difference.”

“Oh, how rich is this? How delicious?” Norman asked. His long tongue flickered out, tasting the air by Peter’s cheek. A tendril of red detached itself from his skeletal body, wrapping whip-quick around Peter’s throat. “All of these years, you and I, locked in this embrace. Our beautiful dance. And now, after you thought you won, after you thought you got your kingdom and your firebird and tricked my own son away from me, now I get to win. Don’t you love a happy ending?”

“Go to hell, Norman,” Peter hissed through gritted teeth. The tendril around his throat tightened.

“I suspect I will, my king of spiders,” Norman said, tracing a claw down Peter’s cheek. “But you first. And I know just how to send you there.”

He pivoted, the tendril around Peter’s throat releasing him as Norman stalked forward – towards Johnny. Johnny had only half a second to register the horror growing on Peter’s face, the way he started forward, before the Goblin King was before him. He raised his hand, and those inhuman claws flashed in the moonlight.

Johnny threw up an arm, shielding his face, but the expected blow never came. Instead, everything went quiet – all save for an awful, wet gurgling noise.

Slowly, Johnny opened his eyes and saw Flash standing in front of him, dressed now in full knightly regalia. His silver armor and red-blond hair both glinted in the moonlight. The Goblin King’s claws had pierced his chest straight through. That awful gurgling noise was coming from him.

“Oh dear,” Norman said, clucking his tongue. “That wasn’t what I meant to do at all.”

“Flash?” Johnny said. His voice was trembling as bad as his hands. He told himself that Flash would be fine. That it wasn’t as bad as he looked. But he knew that it was, and before he could stop them the tears were rolling silently down his cheeks.

Flash had been a good man. He hadn’t deserved that. Johnny wished he hadn’t had jumped in front of him – wondered _why_ he had jumped in front of him.

But he supposed he’d never get to ask him now.

“The loyal knight,” Norman said. He pulled his claws from Flash’s chest with a horrible wet sound. “Dying for your king’s lover. I suppose that’s fitting end for you.”

“Flash!” Peter shouted, throwing out a hand, but it was too late. Flash slumped, lifeless, to the ground. Blood spread across the stone floor like a slick dark puddle, reflecting the red moon and the Goblin King’s sharp claws.

“I didn’t want to do that, you know,” Norman said to Johnny. He stepped over Flash’s lifeless body. “He was always so much fun, before, when your sorry prince of spiders was banished far away in the cold and this castle was all mine. I never thought he made a very good knight, granted.” A cruel grin curled across his face. “No, more of a court jester, if you asked me.”

“I’ll kill you,” Peter snarled.

“Promises, promises,” Norman chuckled.

Metal clashed against inhuman claws as Peter struck; the sword glanced off of Norman as if he was covered in armor and not some creature from the deepest depths Johnny had ever fathomed. Shock showed on Peter’s face – but only for a moment before it was gone, replaced by a look of steely determination.

“Would you like to try again?” Norman asked, laughing with his head thrown back. “Go ahead, king of spiders. Strike me down if you can.”

He lashed out, so quickly that his arm was little more than a blood red blur. The sword was knocked from Peter’s hand, but Peter barely seemed to notice. With a wild yell he launched himself at the Goblin King, as if determined to kill him with his bare hands.

He was outmatched. Even Johnny could see that, and it made fear sink its cold claws into his heart.

The Goblin King, with all of his inhuman strength, struck Peter, and then Peter struck the wall. There was a terrifying crack – though whether it was the wall or Peter, Johnny didn’t know – and Peter crumpled to the ground. He didn’t rise. Johnny rushed to his side, his throat tight with panic. His hands shook as he turned Peter over. His eyes were closed and his face was streaked with blood from a nasty cut the Goblin King had given him above his right eye, but he breathed. He had a pulse.

He wasn’t dead. Not like poor Flash.

Johnny could have wept with relief, but there was no time for that, not when he was alone now with the Goblin King.

“It’s just you and I now, little firebird,” Norman said, baring those sharp teeth. “No knight to save you. No king to whisk you away from that sad little hovel you should have died in. Don’t you feel lucky?”

It was hopeless, Johnny knew. If Peter couldn’t best the Goblin King in combat, then what hope did Johnny have? Still, his hands shaking, he drew his borrowed sword and held it out before him, more to keep distance between himself and Norman than as any sort of threat. He backed up as much as he could while keeping himself in front of Peter.

“Come now,” Norman said. He moved quick as a snake, so that Johnny hadn’t so much as blinked before he found him right before him, those green eyes flashing. “What does a peasant boy like you know what to do with one of those? Your king would have been better off handing you a spade or a rake.”

His hand darted out and he gripped Johnny’s wrist so tight that Johnny thought it might shatter, forcing his fingers to release their grip on the sword. It clattered to the ground, useless, as Johnny cried out.

“I know all your tricks,” Norman hissed, his breath hot against Johnny’s face. Claws pricked at his skin as the Goblin King wrenched his face up. “There will be no worming your way out this time. No, you’ll die here – but don’t worry.” His face split into an inhumanly wide grin. “I’ll leave your king alive just long enough for him to see what I’ve done to you.”

Johnny spit in his face. The Goblin King laughed before he backhanded him, the blow hard enough to send Johnny sprawling to the ground. He groaned, struggling to get his hands and knees under him.

If the Goblin King was going to kill him, then Johnny was not going to die on the ground.

The clouds outside the castle parted and moonlight streaked across the floor. There was someone standing in it.

Gwen stood behind the Goblin King. She looked different than the first time Johnny had seen her. Then she had been beautiful but insubstantial, a shadow made out of moonlight. She still looked like she might fade away at any second now, but there was a hard, angry set to her fair features, and it made Johnny’s breath catch.

“What are you looking at, whelp?” Norman asked.

Johnny wasn’t sure he could have spoken if he wanted to. A strange hush had fallen over the room at Gwen’s arrival, and everything seemed very still. Gwen’s gaze fell upon him where he was protectively curled around Peter and she raised one pale finger to her lips.

The Goblin King turned and all the color drained from his face.

“Gwendolyn,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”

“Norman,” she said in a voice like bells on the wind. Her hair was silver and her dress was starlight. Her eyes were utterly cold.

“You can’t be here,” Norman said. “Meddling girl, always seeing behind my lies. I killed you.”

“Yes,” Gwen said. “I remember. And yet, here I am. And Norman…”

Gwen’s shadow was small, but she somehow in that moment she seemed ten feet tall, her skin made of marble and her eyes made of steel. She tilted her head so that her lips were mere inches from Norman’s ear.

“I think it’s your turn now,” she said. “You know he would have let you live. After everything, he would have. But you had to challenge him, didn’t you? It just wasn’t enough for you. You couldn’t stand it, how much better he was – a better ruler, a better man.”

She drew a finger down his cheek, a mocking imitation of the way he’d gripped Johnny’s face just moments before. Norman’s inhumanly green eyes were wide.

“Now you’ll be stuck with me,” Gwen whispered in Norman’s ear. “And you’ll find me far less lenient than Peter ever was.”

Johnny had seen the Goblin King triumphant, scheming, furious – a kaleidoscope of emotions. Never before had he seen him look afraid.

“Burn in hell, Goblin King,” Gwen whispered, just loud enough for Johnny to hear.

Gwen was already fading in the moonlight, but she looked up at Johnny and in that moment he knew what he had to do. He tasted ash in the back of his throat at the very thought, but there wasn’t any other choice. He knew it. The specter of Gwen knew it.

Peter had promised that this would end tonight, and Johnny wouldn’t be the one to make a liar out of him.

He gripped Peter’s shoulder for strength and then staggered to his feet. He felt unsteady and sick and terrified, but still he lifted his hand.

The creatures were afraid of fire, but then fire could burn many things. He didn’t possess ordinary fire, Ezekiel had once told him, but magical fire. Cleansing fire. Johnny took a deep breath, reaching down inside himself for the last of his embers. To his surprise, he found the fire inside him roared.

The flames sprang up at the Goblin King’s feet in a circle and quickly closed inwards. Norman’s head whipped from side to side as he took in the flames; he tried to take a step back and the circle of fire rose higher, trapping him within it.

“What is this?” Norman asked, looking at Johnny.

Sweat gathered at Johnny’s temples, matting his hair to his skin. It felt like it was taking everything inside of him to keep the fire going, even roaring within him as it was – he couldn’t spare the effort to speak. He raised his hands and the fire leapt.

Realization dawned on Norman’s face as the fire climbed higher. The red that coated his body started to melt away from his skin, but there was nowhere for it to escape the circle of flames. It wound around his body like panicked ribbons.

“You don’t have what it takes,” Norman sneered. But there was panic in his voice and in his eyes now; Johnny could see it. “Stop this! Stop it at once! I won’t – I will not allow this!”

Knowing what he had to do didn’t make it any easier. Knowing that the Goblin King would have gladly seen him burn in front of Peter mere months ago didn’t, either. Bile rose in Johnny’s throat; his stomach turned. He urged the flames higher.

The flames climbed higher, licking up his arms, his chest. The Goblin King’s head whipped around to look at the specter of Gwen, still standing in her ray of moonlight.

“Gwendolyn!” he said. “Gwendolyn, stop this. I can – I can fix it, if you stop it! I can help you!”

Gwen smiled and simply kept watching.

There were two monsters screaming in unison now: the Goblin King and his monster. Their voices blended together, a shrieking cacophony that made Johnny want to stop, made him want to cover his ears, made him want to run until he couldn’t hear them anymore. He couldn’t do any of those things; he had to grit his teeth and concentrate. Johnny coaxed the flames higher, hotter than he’d ever tried to make them before. It had to be enough, he told himself. To save Peter, it would have to be enough.

He caught one last glimpse of Gwen through the fire, flickering in the light, before she faded away. She looked approving.

Like a candle snuffed, the fire within Johnny gave out. He fell to his hands and knees, panting with exhaustion. Sweat dripped down his nose and the skin of his palms stung like he’d held them too close to an open flame. Everything around him was quiet and for a moment he was afraid to look up.

Slowly, slowly, he raised his head.

Norman had crumpled to the ground, no more than a burnt husk. Part of Johnny expected him to somehow rise from the ashes, to reveal himself some greater evil, unable to be contained by a flesh and blood vessel. But he didn’t stir; the Goblin King was dead.

Johnny wondered if he should feel something – victorious, perhaps, at having triumphed, or disgusted and ashamed at having taken a life. He didn’t feel anything, though. He slumped back against the wall and felt only numb. His hands shook as he held them to his chest. In the ensuing silence it all felt like a terrible dream – he wondered if Gwen had really been there, a dead girl come to claim her due, or if he’d simply imagined it.

A low groan drew his attention. Peter was pulling himself up, shaking his head and groping for the hilt of his sword. He stopped as soon as his fingertips brushed it, and Johnny watched as he took in the scene – the Goblin King a burnt husk, lying dead on the ground. Peter’s eyes went wide, his jaw dropped open, and Johnny’s heart sank.

Peter staggered, unsteady, to his feet, gripping his sword tight. His eyes landed on Johnny and his harsh intake of breath shattered the silence. Johnny wanted to ask if he knew why Johnny had done what he’d done, if he understood or if he hated him for it, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. If he was going to send Johnny back into the cold.

Johnny would have understood if he did. He wouldn’t fight him; he would go, if Peter asked it. Still, tears welled in his eyes at the thought.

Peter’s sword fell from his hand and clattered to the ground. He rushed towards Johnny, sweeping him into his arms and momentarily lifting him up off the ground.

“You’re okay,” Peter said, his voice thick with emotion, and Johnny wasn’t sure who he was trying to reassure – Johnny or himself. “You’re all right, you’re all right, I promise. I’m all right. It’s over now.”

“Peter,” Johnny said, embracing him back. Peter smelled like smoke and blood and sweat and Johnny had never smelled anything better, because Peter was whole and warm and safe against him. He caught Peter’s face between his hands and kissed him fiercely, and finally he felt warmth flow back into his veins.

“I have you,” Peter repeated, kissing Johnny’s ear, then his cheek, then dropping his forehead against Johnny’s shoulder. “I have you. I won’t let you go.”

“I’m sorry,” Johnny said. He clung onto Peter desperately, almost afraid to let go.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Peter said, his voice fierce. He lifted his head; there was nothing resentful in his dark brown eyes, only warmth and love. “You never have anything to apologize for.”

Johnny’s throat was tight, his eyes stung. He didn’t feel like that was very true at all, but he wanted it to be. Peter held him for a long moment, long enough that it felt like they were the only ones left in the world, but then his grip loosened, and slowly he took a step back.

“Peter?” Johnny said quietly.

Peter was staring past the Goblin King’s body, where another lay still dressed in shining armor. Peter’s hand tightened at Johnny’s arm for a moment, and then he let go. Johnny understood.

It seemed like a hollow victory when Flash lay dead alongside the Goblin King.

Peter dropped to his knees in front of the body.

“Flash,” Peter whispered, staring down at him. He repeated his name, louder, as if Flash might stir, but he didn’t, not even when Peter reached to touch his pale cheek. A tear slipped, silent, down Peter’s cheek. He closed his eyes, looking the very picture of a defeated king as hung his head.

“He took the blow for me,” Johnny said, the words falling heavy from his lips. There was a deep dull ache in his chest, like a part of him had been ripped out.

“That was Flash,” Peter said quietly. “He always wanted to be the noble knight. He would’ve done anything to prove himself.” He raised a hand, pressing it over his eyes. “I should have told him a long time ago that there was nothing to prove.”

“I’m sorry,” Johnny said, coming up behind Peter and sinking to his knees. He wrapped his arms around Peter’s shoulders from behind, laying his cheek against Peter’s hair, and didn’t say what he was thinking: that Flash shouldn’t have taken the blow. That it should have been him instead. But he still thought it.

“He wasn’t just my best knight. He was my friend,” Peter said. He tenderly brushed a lock of bronze hair back from Flash’s forehead. It seemed dull, somehow, as if it had lost its luster when Flash had lost his life. “My first friend, in his own way, besides my brothers. Now with the Goblin King dead I suppose I’ll never see any of them again.”

“Don’t say that,” Johnny said, pressing a kiss just above his ear. “You’ll find a way.”

Peter shook his head, and then he was climbing to his feet. He reached out a hand to help Johnny up, pulling him against his side and wrapping an arm around him. Johnny was tired and heartsick and grateful, so grateful, that Peter was with him because in the moment it felt like Peter was all that was holding him up.

“As for him…” Peter stared down at Norman in disgust. “He’ll get a grave. For Harry, he’ll get a grave.”

Something stirred from within the Goblin King’s charred body. The Venom curse seemed to flow out of him like black blood, sliding like an oily puddle to the floor. It seemed like it was alone – that there was none of the crimson beast left. Johnny stepped forward before he could even think about it, ready to set it aflame again, but it seemed he had used too much of his fire. His fingertips sparked and sputtered, smoke curling up from his palms. There was no more fire to be found within him, he feared, not tonight.

The black sludge seemed to hesitate a moment, then slid, its movements swift, over Flash’s prone body.

“No!” Peter shouted, flinging out a hand, but it was too late; the inky liquid was already sinking into Flash’s skin, the midnight black of it mingling with the red of his blood. It made his skin look paler, made him look all the more still. “He’s dead, you monster! Leave him alone!”

A tendril spread across Flash’s face, caressing delicately across his cheek like it was mocking Peter, and then it was gone, the creature hiding away in Flash’s body.

Peter’s shoulders shook -- with rage or grief or both -- as he hung his head. Johnny grabbed his shoulder and slid a comforting hand down his back, his own gaze fixed on Flash’s body. It was all his fault – if he’d been quicker, Flash wouldn’t have needed to take the blow for him. Peter’s friend and favorite knight was dead because of him, and now Norman’s cursed monster was using his corpse as a last refuge. Johnny’s eyes burned at the corners, but he couldn’t look away, and when he opened his mouth to say something, to apologize or comfort or scream, no sound came out.

After a moment, Peter breathed in deep and pulled himself back up. There were tears still on his face, but his expression was shuttered tight.

“The beast only fled to him after you burned the Goblin King,” he said numbly. “And from me to the Goblin King after your fire. We’ll have to burn the body. It’s the only way to get rid of it for good. We’ll burn it until there’s nothing left, and nowhere for it to flee.”

Bile rose in Johnny’s throat at the thought of having to burn Flash’s body. The Goblin King had been bad enough, but Flash had been good and noble and Johnny couldn’t stand the thought of watching his flames burn him up.

“I can’t,” he said, choking on the words. He wanted to apologize, to tell Peter he would do anything else he asked, but not this. The words didn’t seem to want to come. His tears didn’t share the same reluctance; they fell, heavy but shockingly cold, sliding down his cheeks to the floor below.

Peter glanced at him, and seemed to realize what Johnny was thinking, because all he said was, “We’ll build a pyre. Normal fire should work just as well.” He took a deep breath. “He deserves a funeral fit for a knight.”

“I’m sorry,” Johnny finally got out. It seemed so inadequate in the face of everything, not at all enough, but it was all he could think of to say. He was surprised to feel the touch of Peter’s fingers against his own.

“The fault is mine, Johnny,” he said, squeezing his hand. His voice was full of deep sorrow. “Don’t cry. All of it is mine.”

Johnny felt numb inside, and shattered, and like nothing would ever be okay again. He hid his face in Peter’s shoulder, his shoulders shaking as he tried not to cry. It wasn’t right for him to cry, not when it was Peter who had lost his friend and loyal knight.

When Peter gasped, Johnny felt it more than heard it, so quiet was the noise. He lifted his head to see what had caused Peter to go so stiff against him, but Peter was still staring at Flash’s body.

Something had changed.

It was like all the color had come back into Flash’s face. His cheeks were flushed, his lips rosy. His hair shone again as if he stood out in the sun. His eyelids fluttered, gold lashes brushing his cheeks, and then slowly opened. For a moment he still seemed frozen, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Flash?” Johnny whispered.

Flash sat up with a strangled gasp, his hand flying to his chest. His eyes only went wider when he touched his broken armor, the chest plate that the Goblin King had torn through.

Peter pulled Johnny behind him. In one swift motion he grabbed his sword from the ground, holding it out in front of them.

Flash looked up and asked, “What happened?”

It sounded like him. There was no strange echo in his voice the way both Peter and Norman had had when they’d been possessed. But Flash was dead; Johnny had seen it.

“It’s a trick,” Peter said, voicing Johnny’s thoughts out loud. His voice was shaking. “You aren’t real.”

Flash’s fair brow creased in confusion.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “I don’t understand – I remember the Goblin King, and then… then there was this voice, calling my name.” He glanced up, his eyes wide. “He’s still calling it.”

“The Goblin King is dead,” Peter said softly. He didn’t move so much as a muscle. “You were dead.”

“Don’t be silly,” Flash told him. “I’m right here. I’m right in front of you.”

“I can see that,” Peter said. “Just as plainly as I saw the Goblin King run you through. Look around, Flash – that’s your blood on the ground.”

Flash looked down in confusion. He brought his hand up once again the gashes in his armor.

“I don’t understand. But Peter -- can’t you hear him? The voice?” Flash asked. “There’s – he’s – oh. He’s in my head.”

There was a new tone in his voice, but it wasn’t one of fear or confusion. He spoke with nothing but wonder.

“We have to get it out of you!” Peter said, starting forward, even as Johnny tightened his grip on his arm to try and keep him with him.

“No!” Flash shouted, flinging a hand out. He stayed where he was, crouched on the ground, one arm wrapped protectively around himself. His strawberry blond curls hung over his face, keeping it in shadow. “It’s – it’s okay. I can feel him inside me.” He gasped a little, and Peter started forward, but Flash only shook his head. “Please. He’s talking to me. He won’t hurt me.”

“It’s a monster!” Peter said. His voice was so loud, filling the hall. “It’s using you! We have to get it out!”

“He healed me!” Flash yelled, matching him for tone. He moved his hand away; where there had been a deep gash only moments before, now there was nothing but pale, freckled skin. Flash looked up and his face broke into a broad, radiant smile. “He _healed_ me.”

“It’s a trick,” Peter said. His voice was thick, and angry, and dangerously close to tears. “It’s using you, and I can’t – I can’t allow that.”

“I am not talking to you as my king!” Flash shouted. “I am talking to you as my friend! He won’t hurt me!”

“You don’t know that!” Peter said. “I can’t – I can’t – there’s been too much.” The rage faded from his face and his voice, leaving an unbearable sort of sorrow in its wake. He lowered his voice as he said, “There’s been too much, Flash. It can’t go on any longer.”

“If you think you can put me down, Peter, then strike,” Flash said, his eyes blazing. “You know I won’t stop it, not if it’s you.”

Peter’s grip on his sword tightened, his shoulders stiffened. Then he opened his hand and the sword clattered to the ground. When he rushed Flash, it was to embrace him.

“I don’t know how this is possible,” Peter said.

“He saved me,” Flash replied, wrapping his arms around Peter. “He healed me. He says he’ll protect me from now on. Please, Peter. He knows you don’t trust him, but I’m still here. Trust me.”

Peter inhaled sharply. He stepped back, taking Flash by the shoulders.

“I do trust you,” he said. “You know I do. If you say you can control it…”

“I can,” Flash said, starting smile. “He’s with me now. He understands.”

Peter smiled back, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Then I trust you. You’re my friend, Flash. My brother. I could never have – I could never.”

Relief flooded Johnny, along with a wave of tiredness. It was over, he told himself. It was done. The Goblin King couldn’t hurt them any longer. It should have brought Johnny some comfort, but instead he felt all hollowed out inside. Standing suddenly seemed to be a tremendous effort. All he wanted to do was to fall into Peter’s warm, strong arms, and then into their soft bed. He wanted Peter to hold and kiss him and tell him he loved him and that he could never hate him. He wanted to sleep for a week and wake up and have breakfast bought to him in bed, scones and clotted cream, and then he wanted to be kissed by Peter some more.

He wanted to cry, more than a little bit. Peter turned and looked at him like he knew, and smiled like he was tired too. He reached out a hand and Johnny gratefully took it. Just like that, he knew he would get everything he wished for.

“Peter?” a thin, frightened voice called. Peter’s head snapped up.

Harry had rounded the corner, and he was staring at the scene before him. His wide eyes traveled from Peter, to Johnny, to Flash, and then…

“Harry, don’t look,” Peter said, throwing up a hand as if to stop him, but it was too late. Harry let out a stifled gasp, his hand clasped over his mouth as he took in his father’s charred body. For one horrible moment, nobody moved. Then Harry let out a keening noise, sinking down to his knees.

Peter turned his face away as if he couldn’t bear to watch.

“My father,” Harry said, staring at the body in shock. Tears brimmed in his green eyes, spilling down his cheeks, and Johnny wondered how anyone could cry for such a monster, even if he had been their father. He’d seen the things Norman had done to Harry.

“Harry,” Peter said softly, making a move as if to reach for him.

Harry yanked himself backwards as if it had been he who was burned.

“You did this,” he said, horror dawning in his voice. “You – you’ve always hated him. You didn’t even try, did you, Peter?”

Peter flinched.

Johnny opened his mouth to say that it had been him, it had been all his doing and Peter had had no hand in it, but Peter’s hand closed around his arm suddenly.

“It was my doing, Harry,” Peter said, shoving Johnny behind him as if to physically shield him from the blame. “You’re right. I’m the one who did it.”

Johnny wanted to protest, wanted to say that it was a lie. He wanted anything but Peter taking this responsibility on himself, too, not when the man he had once sacrificed everything for was staring up at him like he hated him. But though Peter was standing tall and proud in front of him, his fingers were shaking where they held Johnny’s arm, and it struck Johnny how tired Peter must be, too, how much he must have wanted the night to be over.

There would be time, Johnny thought, for the truth later. He could let Peter have his lie for now. Harry must have known it was a lie, after all – he had seen Johnny walk through the flames. He knew that fire wasn’t Peter’s element.

“Father,” Harry sobbed bitterly, hanging his head. “Oh, father…”

It was Flash who gingerly knelt next to him, reaching over and tugging him into his arms. Harry went like a limp ragdoll, sprawling across Flash’s chest as Flash tucked Harry’s head beneath his chin.

“Shh now,” he murmured, his eyes faraway as he glanced at Norman’s burned body. “Don’t cry.”

Something had shifted – the moon had gone behind the clouds, and the red glow was gone. Pure starlight fell across the floor. Johnny’s throat felt tight. He turned to Peter, burying his face against his throat, and Peter’s arms came up around him, one hand buried in his hair as he held him fast.

“It’s okay,” Flash hummed to Harry – no, Johnny realized. Not to Harry. And not to himself. He was speaking to the creature underneath his skin. “It’s okay now. I have you.”

* * *

Slowly, things in the castle returned to normal – or as normal, Johnny supposed, as they ever had been. He’d thought he’d known a version of normal, once upon a time, passing each cold dreary day by in that little village by the edge of the woods, but lately he wondered if he’d mistaken numbness for normalcy. He felt more than ever now.

The Goblin King’s body was burned far away from the castle grounds. Peter attended with Johnny by his side; Harry, still healing, did not. With the Goblin King dead, his hold over his son lifted, but there was a new strange brittleness about Harry now, and he was silent where before he had raved. The claw marks on his face healed, for the most part. The scars stubbornly refused to fade no matter what Peter’s physicians applied to them.

What worried Johnny the most was the new look in Harry’s eyes when he gazed at Peter, hard and cold and angry. He wondered how Harry could blame Peter for his father’s death, as if the truth wasn’t in front of his eyes. He wondered how someone could miss a man like Norman Osborn. But then Johnny thought about his own father’s cruel moments, in their cold little cabin, and he thought about how he sometimes missed him still, and thought that maybe he could understand, even if he didn’t want to.

Still, when Harry and Liz departed two weeks later, it was to Johnny’s great relief.

Peter wasn’t happy about Flash’s new situation, which he made abundantly clear to Johnny at every possible opportunity, but as the days went on and nothing sinister came to pass, slowly even he seemed to accept it as the new normal – or so Johnny had thought, until the day he came across Flash’s open door and found him packing his things.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked. Flash turned and smiled at him, but there was no surprise on his face, as if he’d known Johnny had approached even with his back turned to him.

“Your Highness,” Flash said, inclining his head.

“You took a blow meant for me,” Johnny said. “You almost died for me. I think you can call me by my name.”

Flash scrunched up his nose like the impropriety of it all was too much for him and Johnny tried not to laugh. He sat down next to him, pulling his knees up and resting his arms on them as he leaned towards Flash. There was something very warm about him these days, like he radiated heat. It suited him.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“We’re taking it day by day,” Flash said, shrugging. Something moved just behind his eyes, blacker than black, and Johnny tried not to shiver, remembering that same inky darkness sliding across Peter’s face. “He’s not bad, Venom. He’s just been used that way. I can teach him how to be different.” He smiled, a little distantly. “We can teach each other.”

He often referred to himself as “we” since he’d bonded with the Venom curse, as if they were one and the same, inextricable from each other. Peter didn’t like it, and Johnny didn’t yet know what to make of it.

“You haven’t told me where you’re going,” Johnny said.

“Oh, well,” Flash said. He was an easy blusher; his fair skin turned as red as his coppery hair. “I’ve been given a mission, I guess you could say. The Goblin King is dead and with him any hope that he might reveal the whereabouts of His Majesty’s brothers. So I’m to set out and find Prince Kaine. His Majesty and I only talked about it this morning.”

“This morning? And you’re setting out already?” Johnny asked.

“The king and I both agree enough time has been wasted. I knew Prince Kaine, when he was much younger,” Flash said, smiling ruefully. “It was a very long time ago, before the Goblin King came and everything changed.”

“Are Peter’s brothers very much like him?” Johnny asked, unable to help his curiosity.

“Prince Ben is,” Flash said. “He and His Majesty might as well be twins, they look so much alike, though Ben is – was more lighthearted, once upon a time. But Prince Kaine…” he trailed off with a smile. “He’s the midnight prince. He’s always been very different from his brothers.” He laughed a little. “He’s much quieter, for one, though don’t tell anyone I ever said something like that about the king.”

“My lips are sealed,” Johnny promised, smiling. Before he’d been jealous of Flash and the way he seemed to know Peter so well, of all the memories they shared that Johnny would never be firsthand privy to. Now it felt nice to hear about everything.

Flash cleared his throat. “Anyway, it’s an honor to be given a mission to find the prince. He’s been missing too long. I want to --” he stopped, shaking his head, and repeated, “It’s a great honor, especially as I’m just one knight.”

“You’re going alone?” Johnny asked, surprised.

“I make the other knights… uneasy, how I am now,” Flash said, frowning down at his belongings. “A few of them said they’d rather desert than come with me. I don’t want anyone to have to make that choice, least of all Peter.”

He shrugged as if it didn’t bother him. But Johnny had seen their treatment of him since Venom had brought him back from the brink of death. The other knights refused to spar with him, or sit with him in the dining hall. They whispered behind his back, and traded looks when he entered a room.

Peter, too, was keeping his distance from Flash, but Johnny knew that he wasn’t acting out of fear like his knights.

“That isn’t fair to you, though, for you to go alone,” Johnny said, frowning.

Flash smiled, the look in his eyes gone a little faraway. “Well, I’m never really alone, not anymore. So perhaps I don’t mind as much as I should.”

“Peter can’t be happy,” Johnny murmured, and Flash shrugged and smiled.

“He feels responsible for what happened. To me, to his brothers. To everyone,” Flash said. He wore a rueful smile. “Peter always feels responsible. It’s what I – what we all admire about him. It makes him a good king. But he doesn’t understand – I want this. I’m happy. I think I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.” He looked up at Johnny and his smile brightened. “I’m all right. I really am.”

“I believe you,” Johnny said, and he did. He just didn’t know how he was ever going to get Peter to believe it, too. “And you’ll be safe, on your travels.”

“Safe as houses. It’s nice,” Flash said. His smile softened. “Not to be so alone.”

* * *

Peter was sitting on the floor of their balcony, watching the sunset. He wore nothing more than an open robe slipping down off one broad shoulder and a pair of loose cotton pants. The pink and golden sunlight cast him in beautiful light, glinting off his bare chest and the bridge of his nose and highlighting his lips.

He looked simultaneously more like a storybook king than he ever had before and also painfully, vulnerably human, and Johnny felt all the more hopelessly in love with him for the latter.

“Hello there,” he said softly, leaning against the open doorway.

Peter looked up at him and smiled. He held out a hand to Johnny and Johnny gladly took it, letting Peter draw him down next to him.

“So, my king,” Johnny teased, laying his head on Peter’s shoulder. “Are there any other curses I should know about?”

“Don’t joke,” Peter said, leaning back against him. “Speaking of curses, I saw you talking to Flash earlier.”

“I don’t think he thinks it’s a curse,” Johnny told him, wrapping his hand around Peter’s wrist and squeezing gently. “He says he’s happy and I think he is. He looks happy.”

“I must have hit him too hard over the head in too many training matches,” Peter said.

“Not everything can be your fault,” Johnny told him, tipping his head to look at him. Peter’s tone had been joking, but his expression was still serious, and Johnny could feel how tense he was. “Peter. It’s not your fault. Not one of us could blame you.”

“Does that matter when I blame myself?” Peter said, shifting away from him with a sigh. “All the pain and suffering Harry endured… you, put in so much danger… and now Flash, with that venomous thing inside of him. He has to live with that because I couldn’t protect all of you.”

“Peter,” Johnny said softly. He leaned in, his hand on Peter’s thigh, until he could press a soft kiss first to his temple, then to his cheek. After a moment, Peter leaned back into him and Johnny met his lips.

“All I’ve wanted to do since I was young… since my uncle died… was keep everyone safe,” Peter confessed as they parted. He knocked his nose gently against Johnny’s, then nuzzled his cheek. “I could have stopped that. I could have stopped all of this.”

“Do you really believe that?” Johnny asked, raising his hand to run his fingertips along Peter’s cheek. Peter sighed, turning his head to kiss Johnny’s palm.

“Does it make it better if I do or if I don’t?” he asked. He smiled softly. “Don’t answer that, I beg you. But never mind me – I have something for you.”

“A present?” Johnny said, perking up. He could practically hear Sue’s voice in his head telling him not to behave like a child, but he couldn’t help it. He’d always loved gifts.

“Something like that,” Peter said. He reached into the pocket of his robe and drew out something small and sparkling, holding it up to the setting sun so Johnny could see.

It was a golden ring with a ruby in the center flanked on either side by smaller blue stones that shone brighter anything Johnny had ever seen before. It was beautiful and unlike anything Johnny had been expecting.

“Well?” Peter said. “Give me your hand.”

“You can’t mean to give that to me,” Johnny said even as he let Peter take his hand.

“It was my uncle’s,” Peter said. He started to slid the ring onto Johnny’s finger. “His hands were larger than yours, but he wore this one on his little finger, so I think… yes.”

The ring fit perfectly. Johnny held up his hand in wonder.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. His throat felt tight with emotion; no one had ever given him anything this fine before. “But it was your uncle’s – it would be wrong of me to take it. You should keep it, put it somewhere safe.”

“It was my uncle’s, yes,” Peter said. He caught Johnny’s hand in both of his and brought it up to his chest, over his heart. “And you are my dearest love. There is nowhere I want to see this ring but on your finger.”

Johnny felt his cheeks heat, a happy blush staining his face. The weight of the ring around his finger was new and strange – he’d never had the money for even cheap baubles before, let alone a ring of solid gold – but comforting, too.

“I wanted to give it to you before,” Peter said. “I thought about it, back when I was under Osborn’s first curse, lying in the dark with you those nights – I thought, if I got the chance, I would give it to you. But then you were here and there were still so many dangers and I thought – I thought I might not have the right, after everything I put you through, and all because of my own selfishness.”

“How were you selfish?” Johnny asked, utterly bewildered at the thought. It seemed like the only thing Peter ever thought of was other people: his aunt, his brothers, his knights, Flash and Harry and Liz and Johnny, too, by some impossible bit of luck on his part.

Peter raised a hand to Johnny’s face. He brushed back a lock of his hair, tucking it gently behind his ear, and then he tucked his knuckles beneath Johnny’s chin. There was a thoughtful look on his face as he stared at Johnny, like he was committing every bit of his face to memory, painting him with his gaze.

“Because I saw you and I fell in love with you,” he said. “And I didn’t want anyone else, even though I knew it would be hard for you. I am sorry, Johnny. Truly I’m sorry about how hard it’s been.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d do it all again a thousand times over if it meant I got to be you,” Johnny said, leaning in close enough that their noses brushed. “You can call me selfish, too, if you want, but all I want is to be with you, too – forever, if I can.”

“I think that can be arranged. It’s a ring, Johnny,” Peter said, the corner of his mouth twitching as he tried to hide a smile. “What else could it possibly mean?”

“Oh shut up,” Johnny said, grinning even as his eyes brimmed with tears. “I haven’t said yes yet, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“What’s stopping you?” Peter asked, chasing Johnny’s lips for a kiss. Johnny laughed, leaning backwards. He felt like there were sparks lighting up in his chest, and maybe there were, but they didn’t bother him anymore.

“I’d like to see my sister,” Johnny announced. Peter paused in his latest attempt to kiss him, surprise written all over his face. He wore an expression, to quote Johnny’s old Aunt Marygay, ‘like a fish’ and Johnny had to struggle to keep a straight face. “And I’d like you to come with me. It’s time she met the man and not just the spider, don’t you think?”

“I think she’ll try to have me flayed in the village square,” Peter said, still making that ridiculous face. “Will she even believe I’m me?”

“I’ll convince her,” Johnny told him, catching one of his hands and holding it in both of his. He brought Peter’s hand up to his chest to rest over his heart. “I want to tell her everything, Peter. Everything about you, about my life here. I want her to see you as I’ve always seen you, as my prince charming.”

“Let me guess,” Peter said with a deep sigh. “She’s going to tell me you’ve always believed in fairy tales.”

“Something like that,” Johnny said, smiling at him. “No more secrets, Peter.”

“No more secrets,” Peter said, leaning in close to Johnny. Their lips met, soft and unhurried, and it made Johnny want to sigh with the tenderness of Peter’s kiss. “No more lies.”

“Oh, and Peter?” Johnny said.

“What?” Peter hummed. His hand was warm against Johnny’s cheek and his kisses soft with just the faintest scrape of stubble. Johnny closed his eyes and let it all fall away: the balcony and the rose bushes, the apple trees and the pink glow of the sunset. Everything but him and Peter.

He felt himself start to smile.

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps I am still mad about Amazing Spider-Man #800. Who can say.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://traincat.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](twitter.com/hellotraincat)!


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